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Planning [in] JusticeSpatial Analysis for Urban Cairo

About TADAMUN

The TADAMUN Initiative believes that all citizens have an equal right to their city, as well as a shared responsibility

towards it. TADAMUN also believes that solidarity among citizens is the only way to achieve social justice and a

decent standard of living, particularly for many who have been ignored for too long. TADAMUN strives to work

with all stakeholders as it builds alliances and coalitions to encourage change and introduces realistic alternatives

and solutions for existing urban problems. What we need is not more undemocratic and elitist decisions, but for all

citizens to claim and demand their urban rights and to devise new urban policies that are more effective, equitable,

participatory, and sustainable.

TADAMUN is an initiative of the American University

(Washington, D.C.) and Takween Integrated

Community Development (Cairo).

Email: [email protected]

Planning [in] Justice

Acknowledgements

TADAMUN: The Cairo Urban Solidarity Initiative

Tadamun is an initiative of American University (Washington, DC) launched in 2011 by Dr. Diane Singerman

(American University) and Kareem Ibrahim (Takween Integrated Community Development). The Planning [in] Justice

project was made possible by the dedicated work of Tadamun staff and researchers, and funding provided by

Oxfam/Novib and the Ford Foundation.

Planning [in] Justice Project Leaders

Kareem Ibrahim (Takween ICD) and Professor Diane Singerman (American University, Washington, DC)

Planning [in] Justice Project Team

Dr. Reem Abdel-Halim - Senior Urban Economist (Takween ICD)

Dr. Deena Khalil - Senior Urban Researcher (Takween ICD)

David Stanek - Senior Urban Researcher (American University)

Sydney Upchurch - Senior Urban Researcher (American University)

Dr. Ayman Amin - Urban Economist (Takween ICD)

Raghda Eissa - GIS Specialist (Takween ICD)

Marwa Barakat - Urban Researcher (Takween ICD)

Danielle Higgins - Urban Researcher (American University)

Dr. Abdel-Baseer A. Mohamed - Urban Researcher (American University)

Mostafa Zohdy - Graphic Designer (Takween ICD)

Abdel-Fattah Nada - Intern (Takween ICD)

All content created by TADAMUN: The Cairo Urban Solidarity Initiative is licensed and published under a Creative Commons

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. You are free to share, republish or remix as long as you attribute

TADAMUN, use it for a noncommercial purpose, and distribute any modifications under a similar license.

i

Spatial Analysis for Urban Cairo


ii

Table of ContentsIntroduction vi

Chapter 1: Conceptual and Theoretical Framework 4Concepts, Measurement Tools, and Spatial Dimensions 5

Poverty and Urban Complexities 5

Equality and Spatial Justice 6

Spatial Justice and Development Gaps 7

Studies of Spatial Justice in Egypt 8

Mapping Spatial Justice as a Global Tool of Change 9

Mapping Poverty in New York 10

Sheltering the Homeless in Baltimore 11

Mapping Environmental Protection in Shanghai 12

Chapter 2: Planning [in] Justice Project Methodology 14An Adequate Housing Perspective 15

Project Phases 17

Phase 1: Data Collection and Classification 17

Phase 2: GIS Data Processing and Analysis 20

Challenges 21

Chapter 3: Spatial Injustice in the Greater Cairo Region 24Poverty Indicators in the GCR 25

Comparing Local Development Programs to Poverty Levels in 2014 - 2015 29

Access to Drinking Water and Sewage Networks 31

Efficacy and Justice in the Distribution of Educational Resources 36

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Chapter 4: Institutional Aspects of Spatial Injustice in Egypt’s Urban Areas 40Fiscal Planning vs. Development Goals 41

Aspects of Urban Planning 44

Chapter 5: Urban Policies and Strategies vs. Spatial Justice 46Development Strategy in the New Cities 47

Development Strategy in Informal Areas 52

Chapter 6: Three Case Studies of Spatial Injustice in the Greater Cairo Region 58Case 1, Izbit al-Hagganah: Conflicting Data and Concentrated Poverty 59

Case 2, Izbit Khayrallah: Administrative Divisions and Spatial Deprivation 60

Case 3, Masakin Uthman: Urban Classifications and Adequate Housing 63

Conclusion: The Road to Just and Sustainable Development 66

Citations: Relevant Egyptian Laws and Works Cited 70Relevant Egyptian Laws 71

Works Cited 72

List of Illustrations

Figure (1) Poverty map of New York based on the 2008-12 American Community Survey. Source: (Bloch et al., 2014).

Figure (2) Map showing the population density in various areas and the sites of current services for the homeless

within a 1.5-mile diameter around a proposed shelter in Baltimore. Source: (Loubert, 2010).

Figure (3) Interactive map showing the location of companies and links to their environmental records. The map

is available to the public on the website of the Institute for Public and Environmental Affairs. Source: (Institute for

Public and Environmental Affairs, n.d.).

Figure (4) Pillars of the Right to Adequate Housing. Source: Original graphic by Tadamun (2015).

Figure (5a) Map showing the percentage of poor people in each neighborhood (shiyakha).

Source: Original map by Tadamun (2015), data sourced from CAPMAS 2006 General Census of Egypt.

Figure (5b) Map showing the number of poor people in each shiyakha.


Figure (5c) Map showing the density of poor people per square kilometer in each shiyakha.


Figure (6) Per capita spending in local programs for various districts, 2014/2015.

Source: Original graph by Tadamun (2015), per capita spending data sourced from Cairo Governorate Website (2015),

number of residents living under the poverty line data sourced from CAPMAS 2013 Poverty Map (2013).

Figure (7a) Map showing the percentage of households connected to the water network in each shiyakha.


Figure (7b) Map showing the percentage of households with running water in each shiyakha.


Figure (8a) Map showing the percentage of households with indoor toilets in each shiyakha.


Figure (8b) Map showing the percentage of households connected to the sewage network in each shiyakha.


Figure (9a) Map showing the concentration of schools within walking distance (1 km). Source: Original map by


iv

Tadamun (2015), data on school locations sourced from GOPP (General Office of Physical Planning).

Figure (9b) Map combining two indicators, population density and schools within walking distance.

Source: Original map by Tadamun (2015), data on population density sourced from CAPMAS 2006 General Census of

Egypt, data on School locations sourced from GOPP (General Office of Physical Planning).

Figure (10) Locations of public schools and their distribution in Imbaba and Dar al-Salam. Source: Original map by

Tadamun (2015), data on school locations sourced from GOPP (General Office of Physical Planning).

Figure (11) Map comparing number of schools currently planned with existing schools per capita.

Source: Original map by Tadamun (2015), data sourced from GOPP and individual governorate websites.

Figure (12) Stages of preparing, approving, and implementing the state General Budget.

Source: Original graphic by Tadamun (2016), data sourced from NUCA (2015).

Figure (13) Three generations of new cities in Egypt.


Figure (14) Current population of new cities compared to target populations.


Figure (15) Egyptians’ monthly income compared to average monthly mortgage payments.

Source: Original graphic by Tadamun (2016), data sourced from Shawkat, 2014 (based on the 2012-2013 Household

Expenditure, Income, and Consumption Survey).

Figure (16) Map of one and only public school in Izbit Khayrallah.

Source: Original graphic by Tadamun (2015), data sourced from GOPP.

Figure (17) Map illustrating relocation from centrally-located informal areas, such as al-Duwayqah and Istabl Antar,

to new cities. Source: (Tadamun, 2015).

v


Introduction


vi Introduction

Before considering the contemporary issue of spatial

inequality in the Greater Cairo Region (GCR) in this

publication, we provide the historical context of urban

governance, the built environment, and national

policies and developments in Egypt. The chapters in

this publication present findings and analysis from

Tadamun’s Planning [in] Justice project. We aim to

situate those findings and analysis (Chapter 3) within

a broader overview of topics and concepts pertaining

to studies of spatial inequality (Chapter 1), political and

institutional factors creating and reinforcing spatial

inequality in the Greater Cairo Region (Chapters 4

and 5), and snapshots of the ways spatial inequality

manifests in case studies of three Cairo neighborhoods

(Chapter 6). We also provide a comprehensive

explanation of the Planning [in] Justice project

methodology in Chapter 2.

Egypt has pursued a set of neoliberal economic

reforms and policies that have reshaped the country

and permeated all dimensions of Egyptian life, since

the 1970s. President Anwar Sadat’s Intifah (1970-

1981) initiated the opening up of Egypt’s economy

to foreign investment, which intensified during the

Mubarak era (1981 – 2011) as the government gradually

privatized much of the public sector, cut public

services, and reduced subsidies. Urban development

was no exception to this new neoliberal agenda. The

government departed from its previous role as the

key provider of housing and public services during

the state socialism of the Nasser era, scaling back

housing regulation, amenities, and public services

to all citizens. As a result, informal housing became

the fallback option for most Egyptians. By the 1990s,

the government regularly engaged in real estate

speculation, selling public land to private investors

for profit. Gradually, collective awareness of the true

value of the land began to dissipate and the social value

of the land, as a right for all citizens and a mainstay

of development and life for communities, was all but

forgotten.

Between the 1960s and the 1990s, immigration

from rural to urban areas increased, driven by job

opportunities in cities and a prevailing vision of

development grounded in urbanization, modernization,

and industry. Propelled by this vision, the government

directed the bulk of public resources to cities, especially

Cairo, transforming cities into magnets for rural

immigrants. Thanks to skyrocketing real estate prices,

the newly-arrived poor migrants looked outside the

formal housing market and began to develop their own

urban communities without assistance or regulation

from the state. Some built their own houses and

devised ways to access amenities in nearby areas.

Communities living in informal areas thus provided

public services—access to water, electricity, sanitation,

garbage collection, among other critical services—for

themselves, hoping that one day their neighborhoods

would grow too large and populous to be ignored and

the government would step in to offer them amenities

and services. Informal, or unplanned, housing

continued to grow even as rural immigration slowed.

The demand for affordable housing in urban areas

increased as poorer residents were priced out of formal

areas and the government failed to provide affordable

options for low-income residents. Meanwhile, the

government expanded its program for building new

cities and urban communities in the desert in an effort

to redirect the population away from the narrow

strip of the Nile Valley. The government channeled

considerable resources into the construction of these

new satellite cities. Despite high hopes, the new cities

failed to attract people, especially the poor who could

not afford the move.

As the government focused efforts on expansion in

desert cities, areas within the Greater Cairo Region

1


(GCR) and other large cities continued to attract

private developers. Yet, the urban environment and

living conditions deteriorated for most middle and

low-income urban residents. Furthermore, cities

had no available space to absorb internal migration

or even the natural growth of local populations. The

government looked beyond urban areas for solutions,

outward towards vast desert lands. However, despite

stated government attempts to attract businesses,

new desert cities could not offer urban residents

adequate job opportunities and thus failed to present

a viable alternative to older cities. Consequently, older

cities remained the primary source of income, services,

and community life for most people, while new cities

remained cut off from these critical resources, as we

discuss further below. Without adequate or effective

strategies for managing growth in existing urban areas,

unplanned construction proliferated, either on nearby

agricultural areas or on state-owned land within cities.

Today, as we explain in Chapter 5, unplanned housing is

the dominant housing model for the poor and the bulk

of Egypt’s middle class alike.

Most scholars and policymakers addressing the

problems of the GCR tend to differentiate only between

“formal” and “informal” areas, with no consideration of

the many variations of arrangements of urban space

within these two categories. Public discourse often

blames residents of informal areas for the substandard

living conditions that prevail there, while ignoring the

role that state policies have played in creating these

areas, commonly referred to as ‘ashwa’iyaat—literally

“haphazard.” A closer examination of the history of

Egypt’s built environment reveals, however, that

many of the government’s own urban programs

and policies inflated housing prices and excluded

broad swaths of Egypt’s population from the formal

housing market. The government was also the first to

allocate uninhabited plots of land to underprivileged

groups or others involved in economic activities that

were difficult to accommodate within the city. The

government did this without a comprehensive plan for

managing growth and also without transferring formal

ownership of land to new residents in the form of title

deeds. As informal areas grew, housing, infrastructure,

and public service provision deteriorated. These

problems, however, are not unique to informal areas.

They also impact certain planned areas, which lack

maintenance, governance, or otherwise fall short of

meeting residents’ needs. Overcrowding, dilapidated

neighborhoods, inefficiency, and lack of public services

are now common features of Egypt’s urban and rural

areas alike, raising questions about the availability of

adequate housing in Egypt’s cities, as well as broader

issues of spatial justice and transparency.

Since the 2011 revolution, Egyptians have made

public demands for social justice and the equitable

distribution of public resources. Despite some

attempts by the government to meet these demands,

urban policies remain largely unchanged and living

conditions continue to deteriorate. Rather than

pursuing costly and ineffective desert development

schemes, urban policies should target the immediate

needs and service deficits impacting urban residents,

and distribute available resources accordingly. The

inequitable distribution of public resources and services

is at the heart of the most pressing challenges facing

Egypt’s urban residents, impacting both informal

and formal areas. Government criteria in financial

planning, the relationship between financial planning

and urban planning, and the processes by which the

government distributes public services all contribute

to this problem. Solutions to Egypt’s urban challenges

require a new, more nuanced understanding of the

complex interplay of factors underlying them—one that

transcends the current binary classifications of informal

vs. formal neighborhoods.


2 Introduction

Tadamun: The Cairo Urban Solidarity Initiative studies

issues of social justice and the built environment in

the GCR, as well as elsewhere throughout the Middle

East and North Africa (MENA) region. Tadamun hopes

to understand and address issues of spatial injustice

by embracing the notion of the right to adequate

housing. This broader understanding incorporates the

component issues of security of tenure, affordability,

habitability, accessibility, location, cultural adequacy,

and the availability of services, facilities, and

infrastructure.

Tadamun launched the Planning [in] Justice project

to study and raise awareness about spatial inequality

in the distribution of public resources among various

urban areas, and to highlight the institutional causes

that reinforce the current conditions in Egypt, especially

in the GCR. The Planning [in] Justice project compiled

publicly-available data, and data available by request,

and utilized Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

software to map a variety of indicators—poverty and

education levels, access to healthcare facilities, public

schools, population density, among other variables—at

the neighborhood level. Whereas previous studies on

similar poverty and development measures in the CGR

have largely been limited to the district level, Planning

[in] Justice captures variations in these indicators at the

shiyakha—or neighborhood—level. The project also aims

to explore the possibilities for developing urban areas,

to analyze the cost and return on public investment

in underserved urban areas, and to compare this

return with investment in new cities and affluent

neighborhoods. We have previously published specific

articles and briefs about spatial inequality, but in this

document we present a more comprehensive analysis

of the topic, drawing from our previous more specific

publications. It is our hope that the Planning [in] Justice

project will provide decision makers and the general

public with a necessary tool to advocate for, develop,

and implement more effective and targeted urban

policies and programs.

Many people in Cairo know that neighborhoods are

not equal, that some neighborhoods are wealthier

and offer better services, while others have less. But

until now, much of the data needed to represent the

scope of the problem was scattered. By compiling and

translating knowledge and data that was previously

inaccessible or fragmented, we offer a compelling way

in the following pages to question the fairness and logic

of public investment and development strategies that

favor wealthier areas and ignore the poorest and most

underserved districts. By producing evidence-based

research on the scope, causes, and consequences of

spatial inequality, we provide a tool for urban dwellers

to understand the character of their neighborhoods

and the way that their city is managed. This tool is also

available for policy-makers to measure the specific

needs of individual neighborhoods, to target their

policies, and to develop a more equitable and just

match between needs and resources in Cairo.

Tadamun imagines the decent city as a place where

adequate housing, services, and basic needs are the

right of all citizens, rather than privileges afforded

to some and not to others. By drawing attention

to underserved areas, providing a means to assess

the needs of communities within these areas, and

offering solutions to help narrow the gaps between

neighborhoods, we are taking a first step towards

making the decent city a reality for all.

3


Chapter 1:Conceptual and Theoretical Framework

Poverty and inequality have recently dominated public debate in Egypt. The political and social dynamism of the

last few years brought into sharper focus the country’s widespread poverty, the uneven distribution of wealth,

and the deterioration of living conditions for broad swathes of the population, especially in poor urban districts.

Scholars who focus on development and the basic rights of citizens, and who wish to examine the roots of the

current social and economic crisis, now generally recognize the need to introduce a spatial dimension to their

research. This perspective affords a better assessment of disparities in the allocation of public resources and

development efforts between regions and cities, as well as among districts within the same city. It is now an

integral part of what is called the study of “spatial justice.”

4 Chapter 1: Conceptual and Theoretical Framework


Concepts, Measurement Tools, and Spatial Dimensions

Spatial justice centers on a basic principle: the rights of

a citizen must not depend on where she or he lives. In

other words, quality of life and access to public services

should not vary dramatically from one geographic

area to another. However, in many countries, income,

employment opportunities, school performance,

the quality of health care, the provision of basic

infrastructure (such as electric utilities and sanitation),

and even the quality of air and potable water may

differ dramatically from region to region, city to city,

and neighborhood to neighborhood. Levels of spatial

inequality increase as poverty, low-quality services, and

infrastructure become concentrated and embedded in

specific geographic locations, limiting economic and

social mobility and compounding poverty.

The concepts of poverty, equality, and justice – and the

spatial dimensions of each of these – are inextricably

linked. However, they differ in their definitions and the

tools used to measure them.

Poverty and Urban Complexities

Poverty is most commonly measured by comparing the

income of the individual or the household to an income

threshold for satisfying the basic needs for survival in

any given country, often referred to as the “poverty

line.” Researchers have argued that income alone is not

enough to capture the multifaceted nature of poverty

and that other dimensions such as housing, health,

food, and general living conditions are necessary to

understanding the lived experience of people in greater

detail. There are also debates over how to best account

for differences in the cost of living between urban and

rural areas (Baker, 2008).

The publication of numerous in-depth studies about

poverty and factors contributing to and perpetuating

it has encouraged a more nuanced and comprehensive

understanding of the concept in recent decades. The

Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative,

for example, employs a poverty index which takes into

account levels of education and health, and access to

clean water, cooking fuel, electricity, and sewage. In

Egypt, however, poverty tends to be measured only

by income and wealth, such as in the 2006 Household

Expenditure, Income, and Consumption Survey,

the 2007 Poverty Map, and the 2012/2013 Poverty

Map. However, Egypt’s Population Health Survey

does consider access to health and sewage services

along with other welfare indicators, and it includes

comparisons not only between rural and urban areas

but also among various regions.

Although measuring poverty on the national level

is still the most common practice in Egypt as well as

globally, researchers are increasingly looking to spatial

indicators to create more detailed understandings

of urban and rural differences, and disparities within

cities. Spatial studies offer a more comprehensive

understanding of the unique issues impacting cities

and thus an opportunity to design better, more

targeted policies and programs for tackling urban

poverty. Studying urban poverty also offers insight

into the characteristics and dynamism of poverty

among city dwellers. There is no denying that poor

people everywhere face difficulties making ends meet,

but in urban contexts the poor also face additional

challenges associated with overcrowding, unhealthy

living conditions, and the absence of the social support

networks one often sees in rural areas. Furthermore,

due to the high value of land in cities, poor urban

dwellers tend to spend a disproportionate share of

their income on housing. Cities, by their very nature,

place the poor in close proximity to the rich, making the

experience of inequality more visible on a daily basis.

Concepts, Measurement Tools, and Spatial Dimensions 5


Consequently, the concept of poverty must embrace

not only the question of resource concentration, but

also broader issues of equality and justice.

Equality and Spatial Justice

In economic terms, equality refers to the equal

distribution of income and resources among

individuals. The most popular tool used in Egypt and

around the world to measure inequality is the Gini

coefficient, which measures the distribution of income

in any given population as a score from 0 to 1. A score

of “0” represents a case of complete income equality

while “1” represents complete inequality, such as the

case when one person in the population receives all of

the income.

In 2013, the Gini coefficient in Egypt was .30, the

lowest ever estimated in the country at the national

level (See the 2013 Household Expenditure, Income,

and Consumption Survey, cited in Verme et al., 2014,

2). National-level inequality in Egypt is also lower

than in other MENA countries and other countries

at similar levels of development. However, in the

past two decades, researchers pointed to a clear

contradiction between Egypt’s relatively high rates

of economic growth on one hand, and increased

rates of poverty and inequality, on the other (al-

Shawarby, 2014). A widespread sense of inequality

and substantial income gaps among Egyptians

seem to contradict the Gini coefficient and call into

question the utility or appropriateness of such a tool

to illuminate various aspects of inequality experienced

by people throughout the country. Some researchers

suggest that household surveys measuring income,

expenditure, and consumption fail to capture the actual

income of the richest segments of the population,

thus distorting the results and masking inequality

(Piketty, 2014). Furthermore, the Gini coefficient is

not necessarily a good measure of well-being. When

poverty is widespread, the coefficient will show a high

level of equality, but only because everyone is poor

(Verme, 2014). Empirical studies have shown that

even when incomes equalize on the national level, this

does not necessarily mean that all people have equal

access to amenities and public services, or that public

resources are distributed fairly based on the needs of

communities. Other measurements of poverty and

wealth may offer a better picture of the detailed reality

of people’s lives (Piketty, 2014; Stiglitz, 2012).

In order to understand the causes and consequences

of inequality and determine how fairly or unfairly

resources are distributed, we must cast a wider net.

To understand how people benefit from resources

and opportunities, analyses of inequality must look

beyond income indicators and consider variables such

as housing, public services, and work opportunities.

The geographic or spatial components of poverty are

also equally important. Most studies of inequality

focus on the national level, which can obscure the

sharp variations between localities at the subnational

level. Most subnational poverty studies focus on

inequality between urban and rural areas. Rates

of marginalization and inequality within different

areas—districts and neighborhoods—of the same city,

however, can be even higher than between cities and

the countryside. The dynamics of inequality within

Egyptian cities has been largely unexplored. Using

research tools and indicators at the micro-level, we

can examine the interaction between individuals,

communities, and public policy priorities, as well as

the impact of this interaction on inequality and spatial

injustice.

Spatial Justice and Development Gaps

Just as important as new measurement tools to capture



the various facets of inequality is the integration of

the concept of justice into these tools. Measuring

equal access to resources and opportunities does not

necessarily take into consideration the fact that various

groups within the population have different needs.

A broader perspective of justice accounts for the

specific needs of individuals, groups, and geographic

areas, and is necessary to ensure that resources

are directed where they are most needed and not

wasted elsewhere. This differentiation is relevant

to development plans. For example, assume that

two neighborhoods within one city have the same

population, but one neighborhood is wealthier than the

other. In this case, the poorer neighborhood likely has

greater needs. Under a development plan committed

strictly to equality, both neighborhoods would receive

the same amount of public spending, irrespective of

the development gap between them. In contrast, a

development plan committed to spatial justice would

allocate more resources to the poorer neighborhood in

order to reduce the development gap. This idea is at the

heart of the concept of spatial justice.

Spatial justice measures people’s access to adequate

housing, public services, amenities, job opportunities,

and other important needs within a particular

geographic area. In addition to measuring service

deficits, inaccessibility of markets, and availability of

economic opportunities, assessments of spatial justice

might consider other dimensions such as the nature of

social relations, the ability to access opportunities in

an equitable manner, and systems for allocating land,

among other aspects important to understanding lived

realities.

In a perfect world, absolute spatial justice would mean

that all citizens have equal access to public amenities

and services, including schools, hospitals, cultural

centers, and jobs. The distance between such amenities

and an individual’s home matters for determining

accessibility, and the number of citizens with access to

such amenities is key to understanding spatial justice. A

more sophisticated definition of spatial justice suggests

equal access to their choice of all of the above, meaning

that citizens should be able to choose employment

options and careers, which schools their children

attend, or which hospitals or health clinics best serve

their needs. Spatial justice is about the quality of public

goods and services within a neighborhood as much as it

is about the quantity.

The concept of spatial justice enables us to comprehend

urban phenomena that might be puzzling otherwise,

such as the concentration of large numbers of the poor

in specific parts of the city, commonly referred to as

“poverty pockets.” In areas where amenities, public

services, and transportation are absent, the cost of

housing is lower, which makes these areas attractive

to larger numbers of poor people who cannot afford to

live elsewhere. Yet, these areas could potentially turn

into “poverty traps,” where individuals born within

these spaces, facing unfair odds, are unable to improve

their situations. Children born in such areas have to

cope with the challenges of poverty and also face social

stigmatization, which may diminish opportunities

for education and later employment. Merely being

associated with a certain area may limit an individual’s

opportunity to succeed elsewhere (Lobao and Saenz,

2002). In short, the diminished chances of self-

improvement are often a function of many factors

outside of an individual’s control, including institutional

prejudice and the negative profiling of impoverished

or disenfranchised neighborhoods (Hamnett, 2003;

Marcuse, 1989).

Spatial injustice must be analyzed within the context

of government decision-making and public financing



processes, as well as the government’s priorities and

institutional apparatus. Often, policy decisions create

or encourage spatial inequality; however, the ways in

which the government formulates policy decisions and

allocates public funds to urban areas are not always

clear-cut. Urban governance, “the linkages of people,

organizations, regulations and practices – visible and

hidden, intended and unintended,” creates formal and

informal rules for decision-making that determine

which areas get resources and which do not (Marwell,

2014). Governance is a process that can serve as an

equalizing force, but governance can also increase the

social and political production of inequality (Marwell,

2014). Through revealing the underlying power

structures behind the social and political production

of inequality, we can render spatial inequality “more

publicly unjustifiable” and advocate for policies that

aim to bring cities closer to the ideal of complete spatial

equality and justice (Lobao and Saez, 2002, 503).

Studies of Spatial Justice in Egypt

In Egypt’s case, researchers who have applied spatial

concepts to the study of poverty and equality have

been able to identify significant development gaps.

They have noted that while poverty rates are higher

in Egyptian rural areas compared to urban ones,

inequality is higher in urban areas. In other words,

the disparity between income levels is much more

pronounced in cities than in the countryside (El Tawila,

Gadallah and El-Majeed, 2014). Aside from income

disparities, some research efforts in Egypt have

tackled the non-monetary aspect of spatial justice.

One studyon spatial justice and urbanization by

Egyptian urbanist Yahia Shawkat examined aspects

of adequate housing across various governorates

1 For more information see www.hcer.org

within the country. The study examined the system

of urbanization in Egypt and the allocation of state

resources for housing, as well as the stable possession

of land and residence, access to amenities, and

other aspects of adequate housing across various

governorates (Shawkat, 2013). The Habi Center for

Environmental Rights also examines spatial justice

and environmental rights; it collects and publishes

data regarding access to safe drinking water, access

to information, and citizen participation, and

encourages the public to play an active role in updating

environmental laws and asserting the right to a safe

and clean environment.1

Mapping Spatial Justice as a Global Tool of Change

Across cities, neighborhoods, and regions, geographic

inequality emerges when the economy shifts, the

allocation of resources becomes skewed, and when

policies undermine citizens’ rights to the equal

distribution of public resources. Public policies

almost universally claim to redress inequities, but

unfortunately, too often there is a mismatch between

government rhetoric and government practices and

decision-making. Affluent neighborhoods tend to have

better schools and health services, tourist areas have

regular garbage collection, and neighborhoods where

high-level government officials and diplomats live are

invariably well-serviced with water, electricity, and

sewage systems, even in cities where poverty and a

lack of resources are common. One way to reverse this

trend is to provide better information about existing

inequities, their degree, and their location—information

that can be used to defend the “right to the city.”



Using official data, business data, and other materials,

including first-hand compilation of community-based

information, researchers worldwide are gaining new

insights into the scope and causes of spatial inequality

on the micro-level, even down to the level of one city

block. Since micro-level data on spatial inequality in

developed countries is often publicly available and

accessible to researchers, communities and activists

can find the tools and data to understand where they

stand in relation to the rest of the city or country, and

advocate for better policies and greater equality.

The “right to the city” is well defined in the Constitution

of the Republic of Ecuador:

“Persons have the right to fully enjoy the city and its public spaces, on the basis of principles of sustainability, social justice, respect for different urban cultures and a balance between the urban and rural sectors.Exercising the right to the city is based on the democratic management of the city, with respect to the social and environmental function of property and the city and with the full exercise of citizenship” (Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador, 2008, Section 6, Article 31).

In the following section, we review a few global

examples of how mapping tools have been utilized to

portray and analyze spatial inequality and to influence

public policy, sometimes successfully and other times,

less so. The following examples illustrate how mapping

can offer insight into crucial problems and help bolster

the public’s claim to shelter, clean air, water, education,

and health—all of which are integral parts of the “right

to the city” whether in the US, China, or Egypt.



Mapping Poverty in New York

The mapping of census data, drawn from the U.S.

Census Bureau’s American Community Survey from

2008-2012 highlights the way poverty is geographically

concentrated in different parts of New York City. The

map below illustrates the percentage of the population

living under the poverty line throughout the city on

a color gradient. In the darkest shaded areas, 40%

of people or more live below the poverty line. The

lightest shades represent areas where less than 10%

of the population live below the poverty line. In some

places on the map, wealthy neighborhoods are directly

adjacent to neighborhoods with high levels of poverty.

Maps like this allow us to easily see the extent of the

geographic concentration of poverty and spatial

inequality for a given region at a very local level.

Ready-made maps for all major U.S. cities are available

and the full American Community Survey is accessible

for any other region in the United States. As a result,

policy-makers, non-profit organizations, activists, or

concerned citizens . Certainly, compelling data analysis

does not necessarily lead to more equitable policies, but

evidence-based research behind persuasive arguments

can sometimes mobilize aggrieved constituencies

to act, or even mobilize champions of change within

government and policy circles.

While this kind of data is readily available to the

public in the U.S., micro-level data is scarce in Egypt.

Most Egyptian studies about poverty and inequality

focus on the national level, with local data collected

only on governorate and regional levels. Information

on neighborhoods is particularly hard to find. As a

result, it is more difficult to understand the unique

challenges residents face in different neighborhoods

on a daily basis, and to design programs to target those

Figure (1) Poverty map of New York using the results of 2008-12 American Community Survey.

Source: (Bloch et al., 2014).



challenges and deficits accordingly.

Sheltering the Homeless in Baltimore

Homelessness remains a serious issue in many

major cities in the United States. In 2009, the City of

Baltimore, Maryland launched a 10-year program that

utilized mapping technology to alleviate homelessness.

The city consulted researchers at Morgan State

University in Baltimore and the researchers collected

information from key stakeholders: homeless

individuals, businesses, service providers, and

residents.

Using GIS, researchers mapped out information

collected from the city, local businesses, and neighbors

of the proposed site. They also plotted mobility

patterns of the homeless and drew on demographic

data from the U.S. Census to create a representation

of the areas they selected for analysis. They connected

911 emergency calls to their geographic locations and

compiled crime data from the targeted area. After

this diversified mapping process and data analysis,

researchers proposed a building site for new homeless

shelter. Using the years 2004 and 2008 for analysis

of crime and emergency medical services data,

researchers concluded that an influx of homeless

people to the proposed site would not increase crime,

and it would provide desperately needed housing for

this population (Loubert, 2010). After securing housing,

the city could then address various common problems

Figure (2) Map showing the population density in various areas and the sites of existing services for the homeless within a 1.5-mile diameter around a proposed shelter in Baltimore.

Source: (Loubert, 2010).

Figure (3) Interactive map showing the location of companies as well as links to their environmental records.

Source: (Loubert, 2010).



among the homeless population such as healthcare,

mental health issues, and unemployment.

The researchers also contacted developers of buildings

for homeless people and solicited design ideas that

would incorporate safety measures for shelter residents

and residents of the surrounding community, as well

as appropriate architectural designs for the area. The

proposed shelter, called the Housing Resource Center,

accommodates over 200 people. As part of this project,

Baltimore also created a 24/7 emergency shelter with

an array of support services (including healthcare,

counseling, and employment).

However, excellent research was no guarantee of

success, as local groups – including the homeless

themselves – did not seem to support the mapping

initiative’s proposals. Morgan State University

researchers discovered that businesses, neighboring

communities, and developers opposed the idea of

having a permanent shelter in their area. Even the

homeless individuals who attended a focus group said

that they preferred assistance to obtain their own

private residences rather than public sector housing.

Mapping Environmental Protection in Shanghai

In another example of the utility of spatial analysis,

Ma Jun, a former Chinese journalist, founded the

Institute for Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE),

a member of the Green Choice Alliance in 2006.

Researchers for the Beijing-based institute have

used environmental data from various sources—

documentation of environmental audits, pollution

records made available by China’s environmental

protection bureaus through state-run newspapers,

and others—to compile a database of environmental

regulations violations. The database includes over

70,000 records of businesses within China that have

violated laws regulating the environmental impact of

industrial activities in China. Ma Jun’s team created

a series of free public resources, including the China

Water Pollution Map, which has significantly raised

awareness about pollution of China’s rivers and bodies

of water (Larson, 2010). Figure (3), also produced and

published by the IPE, shows the location of companies

with industrial activities in Shanghai and direct links

to those companies’ environmental records. This is a

powerful tool for anyone seeking to learn about the

impact of industrial activities on air, water, and other

environmental qualities in their community. The

IPE’s environmental mapping campaign was made

possible by China’s decision, in recent years, to make

environmental records public. China launched its first

environmental agency, modeled somewhat after the

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in 1993,

one year after the Rio Earth Summit. In May 2008, the

government required local environmental protection

departments to make certain categories of pollution

records public. Despite these positive moves towards

transparency, access to environmental information in

China remains incomplete and lacks uniformity.

In many corners of the globe, people are developing

and sharing tools to visualize and publicize analyses

of spatial inequality. Complex, deep-rooted problems

rarely have easy solutions but mapping geocoded

data about spatial inequality can increase citizen

awareness, educate the public, and give initiatives

and organizations the tools to “fight with data” for

positive change.



13


Chapter 2:Planning [in] Justice Project Methodology

The Planning [in] Justice project relies mainly on quantitative indicators, which capture information on

demographics, poverty, living conditions, the condition of dwellings, public amenities, the number of

educational and health facilities, government investment plans, and local development allocations. Tadamun

supplemented the project’s quantitative data with qualitative case studies. Our analysis of spatial inequality

focuses on various aspects of adequate housing—a set of housing standards established by the United Nations

and recognized by international human rights law as a minimum right of citizenry for all persons. Aspects of

adequate housing, viewed in combination with socio-economic welfare indicators, provide a variety of data that

offer a more comprehensive picture of poverty and inequality.

14 Chapter 2: Planning [in] Justice Project Methodology


An Adequate Housing Perspective

The United Nations established the right to adequate

housing as a human right guaranteed by the

International Covenant on Economic, Social and

Cultural Rights, to which Egypt is a signatory. The

United Nations defines the right to adequate housing as

comprising the following elements:

> Security of tenure: housing is not adequate if its

occupants do not have a degree of tenure security

which guarantees legal protection against forced

evictions, harassment, and other threats.

> Availability of services, materials, facilities, and

infrastructure: housing is not adequate if its

occupants do not have safe drinking water, adequate

sanitation, energy for cooking, heating, lighting, food

storage, or refuse disposal.

> Affordability: housing is not adequate if its cost

threatens or compromises the occupants’ enjoyment

of other human rights.

> Habitability: housing is not adequate if it does not

guarantee physical safety or provide adequate

space, as well as protection against the cold, damp,

heat, rain, wind, other threats to health, and

structural hazards.

> Accessibility: housing is not adequate if the specific

needs of disadvantaged and marginalized groups are

not taken into account.

> Location: housing is not adequate if it is cut off from

employment opportunities, health care services,

schools, childcare centers, and other social facilities,

or if it is located in polluted or dangerous areas.

> Cultural adequacy: housing is not adequate if it does

not respect and take into account the expression of

cultural identity.

Figure (4) Pillars of the Right to Adequate Housing.

Legal securityof tenure

Habitability Accessibility

A�ordability Availabilityof services

Location

Culturaladequacy

Source: Original graphic by Tadamun (2015).

An Adequate Housing Perspective 15


As discussed in Chapter 1 of this publication, richer

analysis of spatial inequality incorporates a diverse

array of indicators relating to citizens’ welfare, thus

capturing a more complex and nuanced picture of the

lived experience of urban residents. In the Planning [in]

Justice project, Tadamun combined data on economic

and social welfare, demographics, and several public

services and expenditures. By incorporating indicators on

the quality and availability of public services in different

parts of the city, as well as income and employment

indicators, Tadamun hoped to not only identify areas

of deprivation and their distribution throughout the

city, but also to better understand patterns of urban

development policies and planning that create and

reinforce spatial inequality.

The Planning [in] Justice project includes data on the

following indicators:

> Indicators of economic welfare: these involve

the analysis and classification of various types of

employment (full/part-time, official/unofficial,

public/private sector); annual per capita income;

poverty indices (number and percentage of people

living under the national poverty line, density of poor

people per square kilometer, and the Gini coefficient);

as well as unemployment rates.

> Indicators of social welfare: these include

indicators that measure the quality of health and

education services on the local level.

> Demographic indicators: these include population

figures and classifications according to gender and

age groups in various shiyakhas.

> Indicators for the distribution and allocation of

public resources: these track public expenditures

allocated to neighborhoods in the annual economic

and social development plan, which lists investment

in education, health, housing, amenities, and

transport sectors, in addition to village allocations,

which currently amount to less than 1% of

public expenditure and are mostly dedicated to

road building, improving the environment,

training, and limited aspects of security and fire

prevention programs.



Project Phases

Phase 1: Data Collection and Classification

Our team of researchers began by scouring official sources for relevant data, and compiling it into a single, uniform

dataset to measure various concepts linked to spatial inequality. The project relies on official data. Much of it is the

same data the Egyptian government uses to plan and implement public policy. The following table shows the data

sources divided according to elements of spatial inequality.

Table 1: Data Sources

Concept Relevant Data/Variables Source

Adequate Housing

Security of tenure Type of home possession (available only at the district level)

General Census of Population, Housing, and Establishments (2006)

Provision of services and infrastructure

Variables related to the availability of services, such as the percentage of families and individuals that are connected to the water network, have a faucet in the house, are connected to the sanitation network, have access to a private bathroom and kitchen within the home, and are able to safely preserve food, etc.

General Census of Population, Housing, and Establishments (2006); Egypt Household Income, Expenditure, and Consumption Survey (2011/2012)

Affordability Income levels in each area compared with real estate prices and rent levels

Egypt Household Income, Expenditure, and Consumption Survey (2011/2012); Egypt Poverty Map (2013); Field research conducted by Tadamun into rents and home prices while researching `Izbit Khayrallah

Safe and habitable housing

Characteristics of the dwelling, including the type of lighting and flooring

General Census of Population, Housing, and Establishments (2006); Egypt Household Income, Expenditure, and Consumption Survey (2011/2012) on governorate level

Housing accessibility Availability of programs that fund housing and the suitability of available credit to increase the purchasing power of citizens in target groups

Independent study

Project Phases 17




Safe location with adequate public services

Availability of clinics, schools, post offices, police stations, youth clubs, green areas, garbage dumps and collection, and distance between dwelling and sources of environmental pollution

District data as posted on governorate websites**; General Census of Population, Housing, and Establishments (2006); Local development plans; Citizen’s Guide to the Investment Plan, Ministry of Planning; School Location Data, GOPP (General Office of Physical Planning)

Welfare

Per capita income Per capita income in each shiyakha Egypt Poverty Map (2013)

Number of poor people Number of people living under the poverty line, as measured by the national poverty line

Egypt Poverty Map (2013)

Percentage of poor people Number of poor people living under the poverty line over total population in the shiyakha, calculated according to the national poverty line

Egypt Poverty Map (2013)

Density of poverty Number of poor people per square kilometer in each shiyakha

Poverty Map (2013); Tadamun calculation of the size of each shiyakha

Unemployment rate Out of work people who are capable and willing to work


Distribution of workers by profession

Percentages of workers employed in the government, or the public sector, or self-employed


Distribution of workers by nature of contract

Percentage of workers employed in temporary jobs or permanent jobs


Social Welfare

Health indicators Measuring the improvement in health Local development data, Health Survey: Available data is divided only into urban and rural areas

Education indicators Level of education attained The General Census of Population, Housing, and Establishments (2006)

Demographics

Size and density of the population

Population, number of households, and population density per square kilometer

The General Census of Population, Housing, and Establishments (2006)





Population composition by gender and age

Percentage of the population by gender and within each age bracket

The General Census of Population, Housing, and Establishments (2006)

Projects

Investment projects Budget allocations to build and expand schools, as well as hospitals, health units, main roads, bridges, housing, and public utilities

Investment plan directories for various governorates – available on official governorate websites**

Projects in local development plans

Local government allocations to pave roads, improve the environment and train local officials, security services, and fire fighters.

District data available on official governorate websites**

** The Investment Plan Directory and other data that was available on government websites was downloaded at the beginning of the project, but attempts to access these sources in the following months revealed that governorate and district website managers removed the files. We are reminded that accessibility to information is not continuous, nor is it protected by the law, but rather subject to the whims of the agencies that release the data and the views these agencies may hold about what citizens must know, when, and how.

The next step involved classifying data according to

location. Since a chief objective of the project was to

analyze data at a local scale, we used shiyakha data

from urban areas and village data from rural areas,

when available. We discovered that some data are only

available at the district (urban) or markaz (rural) level.

(These two ‘higher’ administrative entities in urban and

rural areas sit above the various urban neighborhoods/

shiyakhas and villages in rural areas). The following table

details the availability of data at different spatial levels:

Table 2: Project Data, Sources, and Levels


Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS)

Shiyakha and village

Poverty Map (2013) Social Fund for Development Shiyakha and village

Investment Plans Ministry of Planning and Administrative Reform

Governorate

Local development plans Ministry of Local Development District and Markaz

Project Phases 19


To produce a spatial analysis of the data, we organized available spatial and geographical data, noting their sources,

in the following table:

Table 3: Geographic Data, Sources, and Levels

Geographic Data Source/Agency

Boundaries of district/markaz 2006 Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS)

Boundaries of shiyakhas/villages 2015 Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS)

Boundaries of inhabited areas Aerial photo, Google Earth; Tadamun, graphic rendering of aerial photo

Phase 2: GIS Data Processing and Analysis

Mapping comprised a major element of analysis and

outputs of the Planning [in] Justice project. Tadamun

used Geographical Information System (GIS) technology

to collect, process, display, and analyze databases and

link available information to geographical locations. GIS

enabled us to link our data on housing, social welfare,

and demographics to specific geographic areas.

Tadamun obtained the spatial data from aerial imagery,

satellites, and digital maps. The latter used either

clear geographical references such as longitudes and

international coordinates, building codes or statistical

figures for land plots, or implicit references such as

addresses and street names. GIS has the advantage of

handling several layers of data simultaneously, while

enhancing the ability to analyze data.

To produce map projections for Planning [in] Justice,

Tadamun first incorporated various data files including

shapefiles and geodatabases into a single database in

ArcGIS, and used satellite images to draw and estimate

the size of inhabited areas within the shiyakhas and

villages. This allowed us to incorporate the demographic

data for each shiyakha, as well as the indicators of

adequate housing and socio-economic welfare with its

geographic location. We then standardized measures

and projections to ensure that all data used the same

coordinate and geographic projection system, and

transferred the database to PostGIS/PostgreSQL, an

open source software. Finally, we produced a series of

maps which provide a visual analysis of the data.

An advantage of GIS is that it integrates complex

geographical and tabular data and displays the resulting

analysis in a user-friendly manner. It can produce

poverty maps, maps for amenities and educational

services, as well as statistical data, infographics,

and reports, which are all available to users who can

access any indicator they wish to study. More than one

indicator can be selected in any layer of the same map,

and when necessary, the data can be superimposed to

facilitate a deeper insight with a multi-layered display.

Users, for example, may compare the availability of

a specific public service with the public investment

allocated to provide this service, in order to determine

whether the resources are being allocated according

to need. The maps Tadamun produced for Planning

[in] Justice make it easier to depict spatial inequality

at the shiyakha level. To date, Tadamun has only



published static visual maps, but we hope to release the

interactive versions, which allow the user to select and

view indicators and demographic statistics from a wide

variety of options, in the near future.

Tadamun discussed the Planning [in] Justice maps in

closed meetings with high and mid-level government

officials from the Ministry of Planning, the General

Organization for Educational Buildings at the

Ministry of Education, and the Informal Settlements

Development Fund (ISDF). Tadamun also presented

the maps at workshops with groups of economists,

urbanists, and civil society activists. We have made

printed maps accessible to the public, and some are

included in this publication.

In addition to the maps, our research team produced

written reports and analysis to compare urban

phenomena and public policies through a spatial justice

lens. We published a number of texts explaining the

project, its methodology, and outcome, and current case

studies to identify the challenges facing neighborhoods

in the GCR, and the root causes and repercussions of

these challenges in terms of spatial inequality. Our

graphic designers produced infographics that simplify

and explain the project’s findings. All Planning [in] Justice

analysis and many of the maps are accessible to the

public free of charge through the Tadamun website.

Challenges

Transparency and access to accurate and reliable data and

information remain a challenge in Egypt. For decades,

the Egyptian state concealed information that is public

in most open and democratic contexts: information

about the public budget, infrastructure projects, and

the allocation of resources. Yet, Egypt’s most recent

constitution (2014) commits to greater transparency and

a right to information, as detailed in Article 68:

Information, data, statistics, and official documents are owned by the people and their disclosure from various sources is a right guaranteed by the state to all citizens, and the state is committed to providing information and making it available to the public in a transparent manner, with the law specifying the manner of obtaining information, providing it, classifying it, and the regulations concerning the handling and preservation of information, and the method of petitioning in cases its supply is refused. The law also sets penalties for blocking information or providing erroneous data deliberately. State agencies are thereby committed to depositing official documents after completing their use with the Egyptian National Archives, so as to protect such documents and secure them against loss or damage, and also to restore and digitize them through the use of all means and modern methods, in accordance with the law (Constitution of Egypt of 2014, Article 68).

Project Phases 21


Progress toward the law set out in Article 68 is

slow, but a number of government ministries and

governorates have begun posting some data on their

websites. Access to reliable and complete data is a

challenge Tadamun faced throughout all phases of

the project. Much of the data used for the project

was available from government ministries, but often

only through request and, at times, for purchase.

The datasets we were able to access were often

incomplete, or otherwise unreliable. Yet, at the same

time, with careful, periodic scrutiny some important

data is available and can be used constructively, as this

project suggests.

The Planning [in] Justice project depends heavily on

data from Egypt’s 2006 population census. CAPMAS

conducted another population census in 2016, and

Tadamun hopes to continue the project using the

results of the more recent census when the government

releases the findings. This will require a similar data

collection and geocoding process, and, as mentioned

above, the availability of public data is subject to

political whims, and is by no means certain. While the

findings of the Planning [in] Justice project laid out in

the next chapter are in large part drawn from decade-

old data, we believe that this analysis remains broadly

representative of the patterns of spatial inequality in

Cairo’s neighborhoods today.



Project Phases 23


Chapter 3:Spatial Injustice in the Greater Cairo Region

The Planning [in] Justice project aimed to reveal the scope of spatial inequality in the GCR using a right to

adequate housing perspective, and to measure the government’s fulfillment of this multidimensional right’s

component parts. The Planning [in] Justice project uncovered several compelling trends in the way the

government distributes resources and services throughout Cairo, including the following:

Predominant conceptions of poverty which ‘locate’ poverty in informal areas are inaccurate. Rather, some

informal areas are actually better off than some formal parts of the city and poverty is not confined to

informal areas.

> Most Cairenes have access to water but the quality of drinking water varies.

> Sewage services are inadequate in the southern and northern parts of the GCR, forcing many communities to

rely on septic tanks, which may contaminate groundwater sources.

> The distribution of public schools across the GCR is highly uneven. New schools are often built in areas that

already have schools, whereas areas that are most in need of schools continue to be deprived of them.

> Expenditures on local development projects are distorted. Already affluent neighborhoods tend to receive

more funding than poorer areas, which are more in need of public resources.

> Government policy vastly favors expenditures on new desert and satellite cities to the established urban

areas in Egypt. The agency responsible for building and planning the new cities—the New Urban Communities

Authority—invested EGP 33.2 Billion in new cities in the 2015/16 fiscal year, which is almost four times the

total public investment in the entire national education sector, and more than five times the total public

investment in the health sector during the same year.

24 Chapter 3: Spatial Injustice in the Greater Cairo Region


Poverty Indicators in the GCR

To comprehend the causes and consequences of

inequality, we must use indicators that are broader in

scope than traditional poverty indices, as traditional

measures tend to focus only on the proportion of

people living under the poverty line. The picture of

poverty and the patterns that emerge both change

depending upon the indicators that one employs.

Utilizing a variety of measures yields new insights

into conditions in the GCR. Tadamun’s spatial analysis

of poverty across the GCR, for example, reveals that

the poor are not concentrated in southern Giza, but

in central and northern Cairo. Using the Poverty

Ratio Index, the 2013 Poverty Map Data (Figure 5a)

shows that the poorest areas in the GCR are located in

southern Giza, where the percentage of poor people

relative to the total population of the shiyakhas is

the highest. However, if we look at the number of

people living under the poverty line, rather than the

percentage (Figure 5b), the picture changes completely.

The greatest concentration of poverty is in northern

Cairo, northern Giza, and southern Qalyubiya. The

reason for this discrepancy is that population density is

higher in central Cairo than in the outskirts of the city.

In other words, the number of poor people in city center

neighborhoods is far greater than neighborhoods in

the outskirts, but the percentage of people below the

poverty line is lower. When we examine the number of

poor people per square kilometer (Figure 5c), we find

that the poor are concentrated in many neighborhoods

in central Cairo such as Ain Shams and Imbaba, as well

as parts of Bulak Abu al-Ela, al-Basatin, Manshiyat

Nasser, and Masr al-Qadimah.

Examining the concentration and density of the poor in

neighborhoods across Cairo challenges the impression

that the inhabitants of informal areas are always the

poorest. The concentration of poverty in some informal

areas is much lower than in certain formal or planned

areas (where the neighborhood is planned under

legal zoning regulations and the buildings are legally

registered).

Poverty Indicators in the GCR 25


Figure (5a) Map showing the percentage of poor people in each shiyakha. Darker shades indicate higher levels of poverty.

Source: Original map by Tadamun (2015), data sourced from CAPMAS, 2006 General Census of Egypt.

0%-10%10%-20%20%-35%35%-50%50%-65%65%-92%



Figure (5b) Map showing the number of poor people in each shiyakha. Darker shades indicate greater numbers.


0-22,08122,081-58,53558,535-103,063103,063-154,113154,113-215,452215,452-312,542

Poverty Indicators in the GCR 27


Figure (5c) Map showing the density of poor per square kilometer in each shiyakha. Darker shades indicate greater density.


0-3,4923,492-9,2639,263-16,72116,721-24,59624,596-36,31536,315-65,075



Comparing Local Development Programs to Poverty Levels in 2014 - 2015

The budget allocation process for local development

programs in Egypt is anything but clear. At the start

of the budget process, each municipality submits

information about its financial needs to the province’s

Governor; however, political capital and bargaining

power, rather than the needs of local communities,

often dictate how successful municipalities are at

securing necessary funding. The government allocates

local funds with little attention to existing poverty

levels or the needs of the inhabitants in question.

Additionally, spending on local development programs

in Cairo is insufficient to meet the city’s needs in terms

of road maintenance, lighting, environmental needs,

and other municipal duties.

Figure 6 compares per capita spending on local

development programs for all districts within the Cairo

governorate in 2014/2015 to the percentage of the

population living under the poverty line in each of these

districts in 2013. From a social justice perspective,

areas most in need should receive more development

funds. However, this comparison reveals that affluent

neighborhoods received significantly more local

development program spending per capita than many

of the poorest neighborhoods. The government’s

allocation of resources to local development

budgets does not, therefore, correspond to local

development needs.

The neighborhood of Nozha, for example, received the

highest allocation of local development funding per

capita, at 42.1 EGP. Meanwhile, the neighborhood of

Ain Shams received a meager 4.7 EGP per capita, almost

one-tenth of Nozha’s allotment, despite the fact that

Nozha is one of the wealthiest areas in Cairo while

Ain Shams is one of the poorest. Moreover, the two

neighborhoods are adjacent to one another. Spatial

inequality thus exists in close geographic proximity and

is therefore highly visible.

Comparing Local Development Programs to Poverty Levels in 2014 - 2015 29


Figure (6) Per capita spending in local programs for various districts 2014/2015.

Source: Original graph by Tadamun (2015), per capita spending data sourced from Cairo Governorate Website (2015), number of residents living under the poverty line data sourced from CAPMAS 2013 Poverty Map (2013).



Access to Drinking Water and Sewage Networks

According to official figures, over 99% of households

in urban areas of Egypt are connected to the water

network. This measure, however, tells very little about

the quality, quantity, and availability of water. The

right to water encompasses more than connectivity

to the water network. The International Convention

of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights notes that

“adequate water facilities and services must be within

safe physical reach for all sections of the population.

Sufficient, safe and acceptable water must be accessible

within, or in the immediate vicinity of, each household,

educational institution, and workplace [...] Water, and

water facilities and services, must be affordable for all.

The direct and indirect costs and charges associated

with securing water must be affordable” (CESCR 2013).

As part of the Planning [in] Justice project, Tadamun

studied variations in water access in neighborhoods

across the GCR. Our analysis revealed that, despite

the high percentage of households connected to the

water network, large areas of Egypt and the GCR still

suffer from problems related to the quantity, quality,

and accessibility of water. Maps based on the 2006

census show that the percentage of areas connected

to the potable water network in the GCR is quite high

(Figure 7a); however, this does not necessarily mean

there is a tap inside each house, only that there is a

communal tap in the building or a public tap within

walking distance. Furthermore, connection to the

water network is no guarantee that the water is clean

or available on a regular basis. If we consider only

households that have a water tap inside the dwelling,

it becomes clear that the rate of water accessibility is

much lower in many areas than official figures would

suggest (Figure 7b). Such areas are mainly located

on the outskirts of the GCR, in the neighborhoods of

Khanka and Qantir (in Qalyubiya) and in Abu al-Numrus

and Gazirat al-Warraq (in Giza).

The Planning [in] Justice project uncovered similarly

troubling trends for access to sewage networks.

According to 2006 census data, the percentage of

indoor toilets in households in the GCR (Figure 7a) is

relatively high. However, the same census shows that

homes in semi-rural areas in the northern and southern

outskirts of the GCR use septic tanks and are not

connected to the sewage network (Figure 8b). These

septic tanks commonly leak sewage into the ground,

creating a health hazard for local residents. Due to

the deteriorated state of pipes transporting water in

these areas, sewage from septic tank leakage may even

pollute the water supply. The leakage from septic tanks

also undermines the structural integrity of nearby

buildings, posing further hazards to residents.

Since the 2006 census, the government has worked to

improve access to better and safer sewage practices.

Hopefully the data from the 2016 census, when it is

released, will indicate improvements.



Figure (7a) Map showing the percentage of households connected to the water network in each shiyakha. Darker shades indicate lower percentages.


0%-5%5%-65%65%-85%85%-95%95%-100%



Figure (7b) Map showing the percentage of households with running water in each shiyakha. Darker shades indicate lower percentages.


0%-5%5%-65%65%-85%85%-95%95%-100%



Figure (8a) Map showing the percentage of households with indoor toilets in each shiyakha. Darker shades indicate lower percentages.


0%-5%5%-25%25%-65%65%-90%90%-100%



Figure (8b) Map showing the percentage of households connected to the sewage network in each shiyakha. Darker shades indicate lower percentages.


0%-5%5%-25%25%-65%65%-90%90%-100%



Efficacy and Justice in the Distribution of Educational Resources

Egypt’s education sector faces several major challenges.

Access to schools and the spatial equality of the

distribution of schools needs far more attention. How

easily can children get to school and how much do

families have to pay to get them there? Two of the

primary reasons that children drop out of school are

due to poverty: either a child’s family cannot afford the

cost (because the family depends on the child’s wages

and employment or another financial reason), or the

child must travel too far to school to make the daily

trip feasible.

Public schools are intended to serve students that live

in the surrounding area. They are inherently community

institutions. To ensure equal access to education,

public schools should be relatively evenly distributed

throughout the city, commensurate to population

size. Most families in the GCR do not own a car so the

majority of students take public transportation, taxis,

tuk-tuks (three-wheeled taxis), or walk to school—

Cairo’s most common mode of transportation. The

farther that families with school-aged children live from

school, the more they must spend on transportation or

the more stress students experience due to the travel

time to and from school. According to the 2012/2013

Household Income, Expenditure, and Consumption

Survey (HIECS), families spend approximately 11

percent of their education budget on transportation

alone (CAPMAS 2013). If families live within walking

distance of their school, the cost of transportation falls

to zero and the stress on students declines.

As part of the Planning [in] Justice project, we assessed

which GCR neighborhoods have the highest number of

public schools within walking distance and compared

this data with poverty levels. Since there is no agreed

upon definition of what constitutes “walking distance,”

we defined the term as one kilometer for the purposes

of this study. Using data from the General Office of

Physical Planning (GOPP) that provides addresses for

schools, we mapped school locations and compared

various neighborhoods with regard to the number

of schools within walking distance of one kilometer

(Figure 9a). Our findings show that some areas are

completely deprived of schools within walking distance

while others have many. There are four neighborhoods

that immediately stand out as having a large number

of schools within walking distance: Fatimid Cairo,

Shubra, al-Abasiya, and Hadayiq al-Qubba. Within each

of these neighborhoods, some locations are within

walking distance of 32 or more public schools. This

is well over the average number of six schools within

walking distance for all neighborhoods within the

study area. One reason for this significant imbalance

may be that the neighborhoods with many schools are

located in some of the oldest parts of the city. The scale

and pattern of the urban fabric in these areas cannot

accommodate large schools; thus, many existing

buildings have been repurposed for schools. Although

we do not have enrollment data for each of the schools

in these neighborhoods, we assume that the schools in

these areas have far fewer students than public schools

in newer parts of the city and that they also serve

smaller populations.



Cairo’s Informal areas are increasingly accommodating

denser populations. The population density in both

Imbaba and Dar al-Salam is over 100,000 people

per square kilometer. When we combined the

map showing the concentration of schools within

walking distance with a map showing population

density (Figure 9b), the results show that informal

areas are hugely underserved, with very few schools

within walking distance per capita. Although more

research is needed to reach a definitive conclusion,

the lack of public schools may be due, in part, to the

government’s reactive approach to the provision of

services in informal areas: the government tends to

begin providing services (including schools) only after

informal areas have been built and populated. This

Figure (9a) Map showing the concentration of schools within walking distance (1 km). Blue is the highest concentration, followed by green, then yellow. Unshaded areas have no schools within walking distance.

Source: Original map by Tadamun (2015); data on school locations sourced from GOPP (General Office of Physical Planning).

Figure (9b) Combining two indicators (population density and schools within walking distance), better illustrates existing needs. Red areas have the fewest schools within walking distance per capita.

Source: Original map by Tadamun (2015). Data on population density sourced from CAPMAS, 2006 General Census of Egypt. Data on School locations sourced from GOPP (General Office of Physical Planning).



reactive approach forces the government to build

schools wherever land is available, rather than in areas

where schools are most needed. A more proactive

approach to land use management in informal areas

would anticipate future growth and designate land for

public schools and other public facilities. Examination

of multiple indicators—the number of public schools,

population density, the number of poor residents, and

distance from homes to schools—creates a clearer

picture of where services and resources are available

compared to where they are most needed. This multi-

dimensional approach could help decision makers to

bring about a more just distribution of resources. Better

data alone, however, will not result in policy changes.

The data on school locations, for example, reveals that

schools are completely absent in several shiyakhas and

urban areas, but the Ministry of Education’s 2014/2015

investment plan for schools does little to remedy this.

By making this kind of information publicly available,

Tadamun aims to provide citizens with an important

tool that they can use to assess the fairness of the

management of their neighborhoods and to advocate

for those resources and services, like schools, that they

need.

Figure (10) Locations of public schools and their distribution in Imbaba and Dar al-Salam. School distribution is so skewed that one area, al-Munira al-Gharbiya, has no schools at all.

Source: Original map by Tadamun (2015). Data on school locations sourced from GOPP (General Office of Physical Planning).



Figure (11) Map comparing number of new schools planned with existing schools per capita. Areas that already have schools are more likely to benefit from new school projects, while areas that are already deprived are less likely to get any new schools.

Source: Original map by Tadamun (2015), existing school data sourced from GOPP, future school project data sourced from individual governorate websites.



Chapter 4:Institutional Aspects of Spatial Injustice in Egypt’s Urban Areas

Long-standing public policies create and perpetuate spatial inequality. Understanding existing conditions

of poverty and resource distribution in Egypt is an important first step in creating a more just city. Only by

identifying the institutional aspects that produce and reinforce spatial injustice in Egypt may we go beyond

explaining the problem and resolve it. An absence of effective institutionalized mechanisms for assessing

development needs in urban areas impairs official efforts to address this complex situation. The official

classification of these areas as formal or informal influences the allocation of public resources, regardless of

the individual needs and priorities of different neighborhoods. The disconnect that exists between the tools of

urban planning and those of fiscal planning complicates the matter even more (see Tadamun 2013a and 2013b).

Poor municipal governance, a lack of transparency, limited access to information, and inadequate oversight and

accountability all compound existing problems. A detailed examination of the process of financial and urban

planning, and the mechanisms determining the local needs for each, may afford a better understanding of the

institutional aspects of spatial injustice in Egypt

40 Chapter 4: Institutional Aspects of Spatial Injustice in Egypt’s Urban Areas


Fiscal Planning vs. Development Goals

The allocation of public resources in Egypt takes place

annually through the state’s general budget. By law,

various government agencies play a role in setting

the financial needs of different agencies, but the main

responsibility rests with the Ministry of Finance and

the Ministry of Planning. The former prepares a draft

budget for submission to the Parliament, while the

latter prepares proposals for investment spending by

various government agencies. Before approving the

draft budget, the Parliament has the right to amend

aspects of proposed public spending. Allocations for

urban development are made through the General

Budget, with funds spent through the governorates

and the municipalities. Funding for health, education,

housing, and other development sectors comes from

the corresponding ministries and is channeled to local

communities through the ministerial departments

attached to the governorates. However, it is unclear

how the ministerial departments decide to allocate

their funding at the lower administrative levels, or

why they give precedence to one neighborhood over

another. Generally speaking, the distribution of financial

resources, by either governorates or ministries, does

not seem to reflect poverty levels or community needs,

but is rather the result of political bargaining among

government officials and bureaucratic departments. In

the case of new cities, the allocation of funding takes

place through the New Urban Communities Authority

(NUCA), whose budget is not formally part of the

General Budget, though it receives some public funding

and loans and its annual surplus is pumped back into the

state’s coffers (Tadamun 2015).

According to law 53 of 1973, the General Budget is the

“financial program of the plan for the following year,

aiming to achieve certain goals in the framework of

the public plan for economic and social development

and according to the state’s public policy” (Article 1).

According to Law 70 of 1973, the aim of development

planning is to “raise the standards of living and diminish

the gaps between classes through increasing the

national income and broadening the scope of services,

in order to create a prosperous and just society” (Article

1). The law mentions several guiding principles that

include central planning, significant participation

by local administration and the public, and a public

sector that plays the key role in development and

in deciding the economic, administrative, and

geographical location of projects (Article 2). Although

such laws embrace the concepts of spatial justice, the

institutional path defined by the law does not lend itself

to enforcing these concepts.

The process of preparing the General Budget begins when

the Ministry of Finance (MoF) issues a booklet containing

the rules various government departments should follow

while preparing their budget proposals. Each department

then sets up a committee to prepare budget proposals on

central and local levels, and to submit these to the MoF,

which prepares the draft budget in consultation with

the Central Bank. The MoF then compiles and amends

the proposals it received and decides on the allocation

of resources. Representatives of various government

departments and agencies are allowed access to the

studies the MoF conducts while preparing the budget

(Articles 13-15 of the General Budget law). This process

concentrates decision-making at the center, without

further consultation with local authorities, a matter that

contradicts the General Budget law (law 70 of 1973).

According to Article 19 of this law, the proposals for the

General Plan for Social and Economic Development,

which is prepared by the Ministry of Planning, must be

formulated on the local level with the involvement of the

planning offices in local councils (which are executive

councils appointed by the government). According

to Article 65 of the Executive Memorandum of the

Fiscal Planning vs. Development Goals 41


Local Administration Law (Law 43 of 1979), during the

preparation of development plans for local units, each

local unit must determine its needs according to carefully

considered priorities. Such plans are then submitted

to the Local Popular Councils (which are elected) for

approval, before being sent to the governorate and

onward to the Higher Committee for Regional Planning.1

The Planning Minister then coordinates with the local

administration minister and other ministers on how to

combine these plans and integrate them into the General

Budget. In practice, these financial negotiations occur

without further consultation with the local levels, and

without any guarantee that local needs will be met in the

General Budget or that resources will be appropriated to

satisfy such needs.

Meanwhile, there are no clear criteria, based on local

needs, to guide the geographical allocation of public

spending in a manner that fulfills the basic needs for all

citizens regardless of their place of residence, so that

they may benefit from development efforts (although

this goal is enshrined in the law). Consequently, the

officials preparing the budget on the local level do not

necessarily follow the spirit of the law with regard to

preparing the budget proposals. Officials on the higher

levels are equally oblivious to these principles. In fact,

the Local Popular Councils – which were dissolved in

2011 and have not been reinstituted since – remain

the only elected offices linking the citizens and their

neighborhoods to the General Budget. It is noteworthy

that the share of local development program spending

1 A proposed 2015 Local Administration Law sets quotas for women and youth representation in LPCs.

in various governorates and neighborhoods, which falls

under the mandate of the popular councils, is no more

than 0.8% of the General Budget’s total expenditure.

Of this meager amount, 69% is dedicated for the

Governorate’s administrative spending while only 3%

is directed to development plans (according to the

development plan of 2015/2016).

Another issue of great significance is the way the

General Budget is itemized, with items divided into

three main categories (administrative, economic,

and operational). This does not emphasize spending

objectives or facilitate the monitoring of such

objectives. This contrasts with other budgets that are

designed to encourage development programs, for the

latter usually offer details about the development goals

and their time frames, thus facilitating follow-up and

encouraging accountability and oversight.

From a financial planning perspective, effective spatial

justice requires a coherent connection between public

spending and development goals, usually in the form

of specific programs at local levels, with spending

and implementation oversight, and with the public

playing a role in assessing local needs and priorities

and in setting clear rules for the equitable allocation of

resources among urban areas. In Egypt, none of these

conditions are met in the preparation of the General

Budget, which hampers spatial justice and undermines

the development goals of public spending.



Figure (12) Stages of preparing, approving, and implementing the state General Budget.


Fiscal Planning vs. Development Goals 43


Aspects of Urban Planning

2 According to the Informal Settlements Development Fund (ISDF) definition.

3 According to the ISDF definition.

4 According to the Unified Building Law 119 for 2008.

5 According to the definition adopted by the Unified Building Law 119 for 2008.

There is an institutional disconnect between urban

planning and financial planning and a resulting

mismatch between financial resources and

development needs. Consequently, the General Budget

process in Egypt lacks mechanisms that connect the

estimated financial needs and planning needs, which

are decided by the country’s urban planning authorities.

Because of this, most of the urban plans conceived

on the local, regional, and national levels are never

implemented. In other words, urban plans that are not

incorporated in the General Budget, or other budgets

and programs, are meaningless.

Furthermore, the tools of urban planning in Egypt

do not reflect in any transparent manner the actual

needs of local communities, which makes it difficult to

identify and ameliorate existing forms of deprivation.

Urban planning in Egypt is still a very top-down process.

An alternative approach is participatory planning,

which depends largely on collecting information and

opinions from residents, who are the main stakeholders

in the communities in which they live, and, as such,

those best able to identify urban areas’ most pressing

development priorities. Participatory planning includes

mechanisms and measures that protect the rights of

residents and ensure the even-handed representation

of the population. It also guarantees the effectiveness

of planning and the proper balance between resources

and the aspirations of communities for upgrading their

neighborhoods. Egypt’s urban planning institutions

have yet to fully comprehend such needs, even though

the concept of participation is becoming more common

and “social consultation sessions” are becoming,

to some extent, a standard procedure in planning

institutions. But these sessions do not amount to

real participation, for they are not carried out in a

timely or consistent fashion, nor are they an integral

feature of the planning process from beginning to end.

Also, the outcome of the sessions is non-binding and

disconnected from financial resources and realities.

Most often, these sessions are held after decisions have

been made in a top-down way, to inform residents of

what is going to happen in their area, without giving

them a chance to participate in determining needs and

priorities or proposing alternative courses.

The classification of existing urban areas in Egypt, as

spelled out by the law or by the institutions active in urban

planning, is one of the institutional aspects that reinforces

spatial inequality. The classification is as follows:

> Planned areas: These are areas that were developed

with master plans, land-use schemes, and planning

and building codes.2

> Unplanned areas: These are areas that were created

in violation of laws and regulations for planning and

construction,3 or that were not created using urban

planning tools.4

> Re-planning areas: These are areas that are targeted

for upgrading through urban plans, that suffer from

high construction density, that have numerous

dilapidated buildings, and that are viewed as needing

re-planning and reconstruction. In areas that contain

some dilapidated buildings and lack amenities and

basic services, planners may decide to replace some

buildings and provide amenities and services.5



> Unsafe areas: These constitute no more than 5% of

the unplanned areas, and are divided by the Informal

Settlements Development Fund (ISDF) into “first

degree areas” (areas posing a threat to the life of

their inhabitants); “second degree areas” (areas with

dilapidated buildings with structural problems);

“third degree areas” (areas constituting a threat to

public health due to a lack of clean water and proper

sewage or the presence of pollution or high-voltage

networks); and “fourth degree areas” (areas where

tenants lack title deeds and related rights).

These classifications influence the direction of

various urban development programs. For example,

the ISDF handles the upgrading of unsafe areas, but

does not necessarily follow the “right to adequate

housing” standards in resolving their problems. The

ISDF sometimes resorts to forceful eviction and

resettlement, which exacerbates the marginalization

and deprivation of residents. Considering that the

definition of “unplanned areas” applies to nearly 75%

of Egypt’s urban areas, according to some estimates, it

is virtually impossible to find an immediate solution to

all these areas (Sims, 2012). But of the areas described

as informal or ‘ashwa’iyaat, some do receive grants

and public funds as part of a political program for

upgrading informal areas, while others that may have

lacked services for decades receive nothing, mostly

because they were denounced in public discussions as

‘ashwa’iyaat. There is no real or specific definition of this

term despite its extensive use in Egyptian politics, the

media, and more recently, legislation.

As priority is given to special programs addressing

‘ashwa’iyaat (the unsafe areas first and then those

categorized as unplanned), other areas classified as

planned and safe suffer from a lack of services and

infrastructure. This situation increases spatial injustice

in various areas. Some of the planned areas inhabited

by the middle and lower classes suffer from degradation

and a shortage of public services to the same extent, or

greater than that seen in unplanned areas. And yet they

remain neglected and excluded from the exceptional

grants sometimes directed to ‘ashwa’iyaat upgrading

schemes. Government housing projects, for example,

often suffer from neglect, poor management, and

inadequate maintenance (see the discussion below

about Masakin Uthman in 6th October city, for a good

example of this situation).

In summary, the existing classification of urban areas

does not reflect the actual development needs of

various areas or their urban, social, and economic

complexities. Describing one area as “unplanned” does

not help us identify the problems the area is facing:

lack of title deeds, services, and public transport, or

high poverty and low social development, for example.

Furthermore, there are no procedures through which

the local elected popular councils or ordinary citizens

can demand priority status for development funding

and upgrading programs in their neighborhood. As

the definitions of unplanned areas and degraded

neighborhoods multiply, as overlapping agencies

come up with their own interpretations, and as

reliable information remains scarce, our ability to

understand the city in a comprehensive and flexible

way is undermined, and the needs of its residents

are compromised.

Aspects of Urban Planning 45


Chapter 5:Urban Policies and Strategies vs. Spatial Justice

Despite the government’s proclaimed commitment to social justice, Egypt’s urban policies and strategies have,

on the whole, exacerbated deprivation and deepened inequality among Egypt’s urban residents. Three main

premises have long guided Egyptian urban policies and practice: the real estate and construction sectors will

stimulate economic growth, land sales will finance the budget deficit, and building new houses will solve the

housing crisis. Despite their failure to solve the many challenges facing Egypt’s urban areas, the efficacy of these

institutional preferences and policies surrounding land and real estate management and housing construction

have largely gone unquestioned by the government, which has pursued the same strategies for over 40 years.

Instead of honoring its professed commitment to social justice and the provision of adequate housing, the

government has become a real estate agent, using Egypt’s land as a profit maximizing resource, at the expense

of distorting the entire housing market. Consequently, Egypt’s most abundant resource—land—has become

prohibitively costly for the average Egyptian. Under a just system of urban governance, land should fulfill a social

function rather than a purely economic one, based on the idea that all citizens have an equal right to the city

(Tadamun 2014). Through the government’s land commodification practices, this principle has been lost and

Egypt’s cities are designed not for all Egyptians, but for a privileged chosen few.

46 Chapter 5: Urban Policies and Strategies vs. Spatial Justice


Ordinary Egyptians, priced out of the formal housing

market, have turned to informal areas as their only option

for affordable housing. As such, urban planning became

a reaction to challenges, rather than a guide to future

urban growth and a guarantee that resources would be

used to promote spatial justice and sustainability. This

chapter reviews the history of Egypt’s urban planning

approaches and examines the practices of implementing

such policies through executive agencies, as well as the

outcome of these policies and their impact on efficiency,

social justice, and the city as a whole.

Urban development policies in Egypt are largely

confined to planning new cities and programs to

upgrade informal areas, the former representing

the dominant approach. This can be seen in Egypt’s

strategic plans for urban development, now enshrined

in Egypt Vision 2030, a document that spells out the

country’s official strategy for sustainable development.1

Vision 2030 incorporates two main policies that have

largely shaped urban development in the country for

the last 60 years: redistribution of the population from

the cities to the desert, away from the Nile Valley and

the Delta, and the construction of new housing. The

government continues to construct new housing in

many cities with little regard for the long-term impact

on the housing market or the needs of disadvantaged

areas, where housing is poor but living conditions are

even worse. Meanwhile, the government keeps building

houses on desert land and in new cities, but fails to

supply them with adequate infrastructure or services.

As the government pursues this strategy in existing and

new cities, a conflict emerges between its rhetoric and

its actions. While the new cities fail to attract a sizable

population or relieve crowdedness in the Nile Valley and

the Delta, social injustice continues to grow.

1 See the urban development section of Egypt Vision 2030. http://www.mop.gov.eg/Vision4.pdf

Development Strategy in the New Cities

The Egyptian government has hailed Egypt’s New

Urban Communities (NUCs) as the solution to all that

ails urban Egypt. State-planned NUCs have proliferated

since the 1970s when they were first planned as a

means to disperse the growing urban population

more evenly across vacant desert lands. After the

1973 war, President Anwar al-Sadat released a public

policy statement, the October Paper, which officially

announced the government’s aim of expanding urban

growth into the desert. Planning for the new cities

began shortly thereafter and by 1977, development of

the 10th of Ramadan City, Egypt’s first new desert city,

was underway. In 1979, the government established

the New Urban Community Authority (NUCA), with a

mandate and a budget to create and develop new cities.

By 1982, NUCA had planned seven “first-generation”

new cities. With the exception of the 15th of May

City, NUCA designed all of the first-generation new

cities as independently economically viable cities,

providing employment opportunities, schools, and

other necessary facilities, as well as housing. Between

1986 and 2000, the second-generation of new cities

emerged. NUCA largely designed these nine cities as

satellite cities to already established urban areas. In

2000, NUCA launched seven new satellite cities, as part

of the third-generation. As of 2016, there were 23 New

Urban Communities across Egypt, with another five

underway, bringing the total to 28 NUCs. Yet, according

to NUCA’s own data, not a single NUC has reached

its target population and the vast majority of these

communities have not even surpassed the 50% mark

(NUCA, 2015). Using CAPMAS estimates, the new cities’

success at meeting their target population is 27% at

best and 3% at worst (NUCA, 2015).

Development Strategy in the New Cities 47


Furthermore, NUCA established the majority of NUCs

as satellite cities, heavily dependent on older urban

areas. Residents of many NUCs continue to commute

to the nearby older cities for work, schools, and

commerce. For example, despite the recent growth of

the population in 6th of October, New Cairo, and Sheikh

Zayed cities, Cairo itself has not experienced any relief

from daily traffic or overcrowding. On the contrary,

population density in Cairo is on the rise.

Despite the failure to meet any of its population

targets, the state has been increasing the number of

NUCs over the years and has even expanded the total

settlement area of individual NUCs (see Figure 13). For

example, NUCA designed 15th of May City in 1978 to

include 6,462 feddans, but then it added another 1,858

feddans in 1995, and another 3,913 in 2009 (NUCA,

2015). These expansions occurred despite the fact that

15th of May City, according to NUCA’s (2015) counts,

had a population of only 200,000 (40% of its target).

Similarly, NUCA originally established New Tiba in 2000

with an area of 5,445 feddans but increased its size

in 2014 by an additional 4,050 feddans, even though

NUCA estimated its current population at 19,000

people—or only 10% of its target population (NUCA,

2015).

One of the main goals of NUCs, according to the law,

is to provide housing for low-income people in order to

obviate the need for informal areas. NUCA estimates

that 1.5 million housing units are needed for low-

income households without much clarity as to the basis

for calculating this figure (NUCA, 2015). According to

a recent social housing law (Law 33 of 2014), Egypt’s

social housing program aims to provide housing units

to low-income households “in areas specified by the

Ministry of Housing across governorates and new

2 Average annual exchange rates as published by the US Internal Revenue Service. Retrieved from https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/yearly-average-currency-exchange-rates

urban communities” and by allocating building plots in

NUCs to middle-income families. It is unclear, however,

whether NUCA is actually fulfilling its mandate.

According to the data on its website, NUCA constructed

hundreds of thousands of housing units for the Social

Housing Project (dedicated to lower-income families and

youth); the National Housing Project (a 2005 presidential

project dedicated to lower and middle-income housing

under Mubarak); the Iskan al-Shabab and Iskan al-

Mustaqbal (lower-income housing projects); and the Dar

Masr middle-income housing project. Egyptian urbanist

Yahia Shawkat, in his 2014 research on the Social Housing

Project, shows that the units supposedly allocated

for lower and middle-income groups are beyond the

financial reach of these households (2014) (see Figure 15).

On its website, NUCA defines lower-income groups as

households with an annual income of up to EGP 36,000

(approximately $5,400 USD at 2012/2013 exchange rates)

or individuals with an annual income of up to EGP 27,000

(approximately $4,000 USD at 2012/2013 exchange

rates).2 But according to the 2012/2013 Household

Income, Expenditure and Consumption Survey (HIECS)

data, households that spend EGP 36,000 annually are

among the richest 20% of the Egyptian population.

Another issue that excludes the poor from the NUCs is

that, although they were conceived as satellite cities

and thus have few job opportunities within them, the

NUCs generally lack public transportation. Inhabitants

of these cities have no option but to own a private

vehicle or commute by privately-run transport services,

which may be costly, inconvenient, or both. This makes

NUCs even less practical for those Egyptians who

cannot afford private cars—the majority of lower-

income individuals and households.



Construction of Egypt’s NUCs is extremely costly and

they generate little revenue. As the number and size

of NUCs grow, the government must invest more in

infrastructure and services. In 2015/2016, NUCA’s

total budget was EGP 64.6 billion and its budget for

projects was EGP 33.2 billion. It allocated EGP 5.6 billion

of its projects budget to New Cairo City alone. 10th of

Ramadan City came in second at EGP 3.5 billion. Public

investment in these two cities and in the new capital

together constitutes 42% of NUCA’s 2015/2016 projects

budget. It is difficult to explain why these cities received

so much of NUCA’s budget.

NUCA has substantially increased its spending on

new cities in recent years at the expense of other

development sectors and existing cities. NUCA

investment in new cities went up from EGP 7.3 billion

in 2014/2015 to 26.2 billion in 2015/2016, not including

the additional EGP 5 billion that went to the new capital

and the EGP 2 billion allocated to the One Million

Feddans Project.

The gross total of NUCA’s investment in new cities for

the 2015/2016 fiscal year is EGP 33.2 billion, almost four

times the total public investment in the entire national

education sector, and more than five times the total

public investment in the health sector during the same

year. By contrast, the former Ministry of Urban Renewal

and Informal Settlements (MURIS) had a budget of

EGP 0.6 billion for that same year (Tadamun 2015).

Admittedly, MURIS had very different tasks than NUCA

(unlike NUCA, MURIS was not in charge of providing

infrastructure). Still, the sizable public spending on

new cities sharply contrasts with the low levels of

public spending allocated to existing underserved

urban areas.Despite the high cost of the new cities,

the financial contribution of these cities to the state’s

revenue is meager. In the past, the government

required NUCA to pay part of its budget surplus to the

Social Housing Fund, as per Decree 33 of 2014, but an

amendment to the decree ended this practice in 2015.

In 2015/2016, for example, the NUCA surplus reinvested

into the government budget amounted to about EGP

8 billion, less than 1% of total public expenditure.

Despite its (limited) positive impact on decreasing the

public deficit, it is not enough to justify the prevailing

government rhetoric and popular belief that expanding

new cities is healthy for the public budget and a major

driver of economic growth. This is especially important

when the government’s claims are not supported

by evidence of the policy’s effectiveness, nor has the

government explained how reducing its expenditures for

new cities would impact Egypt's economic growth.

A small amount of land in the NUCs has been allocated

towards lower and middle-income housing, yet there

is no way to measure if this land allocation is actually

meeting the housing demand of such groups. The

bigger issue is that the homes NUCA is building in most

cases are not accessible for the poor and middle classes,

and when they can afford these houses they do not

satisfy their employment, transportation, education,

and other needs.

At present, NUCA is investing billions of pounds in the

new administrative capital and continues to spend

billions on new cities all over the country with various

private, public, and global partners. As billions pour into

the new cities, living conditions in older cities continue

to suffer from inadequate funding and deteriorating

services, heightening the sense of imbalance between

the existing cities, with their millions of inhabitants, and

the sparsely populated NUCs.



Figure (13) Three generations of new cities in Egypt.




Figure (14) Current population of new cities compared to their target populations.

Source: Original graphic by Tadamun (2016), data sourced NUCA (2015).



Development Strategy in Informal Areas

One of the reasons for the failure of new cities to

achieve their goals is that the government failed to

consider the nuances of social interaction in urban

communities. The government seems to think that

wide boulevards, infrastructure, and services are

enough to create a community. But the inability

of the new cities to reach their target populations,

especially the poor, contradict this vision. Egyptians

with modest incomes have developed their own

innovative solutions to developing and improving

their communities. They did so independently of the

government and without recourse to legal procedures

or official planning, and ultimately without the benefit

of public services, amenities, and infrastructure. The

government condemned their actions and denounced

their communities as ‘ashwa’iyaat simply because these

communities were outside of government control.

In Cairo—the city in which the extent of informal areas

is best known—the Ministry of Housing estimates

Figure (15) Average monthly income compared to average monthly mortgage payments in new cities.

Mon

thly

Hou

seho

ld C

onsu

mpt

ion

2012

/201

3 (E

GP)

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

4000

5000

Lower Income Group

Middle Income Group

Richest Income Group

Poor Group

Minimum mortgage payment to own an average apartment in New Cities

Housing not Reaching the PoorThe monthly income of almost 60% of the population does not exceed EGP 2,000, while the monthly mortgage payment required to own an apartment in Badr City is EGP 3,625 on average.

Source: Original graphic by Tadamun (2016), data sourced from Shawkat (2014).



that 40 percent of the population lives in informal

settlements. A comparison of census data between

1996 and 2006 puts the number at 67 percent (Sims

2012), with the percentage increasing since the 2011

Revolution. In the rest of the country, much less is

known. In Alexandria, David Sims, a long-time urban

practitioner and observer of Egypt, estimates that

at least 40 percent of residents live in informal areas.

In some of the smaller cities in Upper Egypt and the

Delta, the percentage is much higher (Sims, 2013).

The Informal Settlements Development Facility (ISDF)

estimates that 75 percent of urban areas in cities and

villages throughout Egypt are unplanned and one

percent are unsafe (ISDF, 2013).

In the second half of the twentieth century, the

government oscillated in its approach to informal areas.

It ignored them initially, then recognized their presence

and provided them with services and infrastructure at

a later stage. Later, the government depicted informal

areas as dangerous hotbeds of terror and crim, after its

confrontation with Islamists and the siege of al-Munira

al-Gadida in Imbaba in the 1990s (Singerman, 2009).

National programs targeting ‘ashwa’iyaat mostly failed

to stop the growth of informal areas in cities, and

some of these programs were marred by violations

of the rights of informal settlement residents. Today,

the government recognizes the presence of informal

areas in the cities, and even uses terms such as

“participation,” “public health,” and “safety” in policy

statements regarding such areas. Article 78 of Egypt’s

2014 constitution notes that “the state is committed

to the formulation of a comprehensive national plan

to address the issue of ‘ashwa’iyaat that includes re-

planning, provision of infrastructure and services,

improvement of the quality of life and public health,

the necessary resources for such plan is to be provided

3 The ISDF was formed by presidential decree in 2008 in reaction to a tragedy in which nearly 110 dwellers of Duwayqah, an informal area, were crushed to death when a major section of the Moqattam plateau in Cairo collapsed onto their houses.

within a definite time frame.”

Informal areas fall primarily under the jurisdiction of

the governorate in which they are located, and the

ISDF.3 The ISDF oversees the surveying of all informal

areas in the country and determining the severity

of challenges facing each area. Areas that the ISDF

designates as unsafe or unplanned become targets

for ISDF intervention, which may include eviction and

forced displacement. Other informal areas are left to

the discretion of the governorates. The ISDF’s approach

to unsafe areas suffers from certain inconsistencies. In

some areas, people living in harsh residential conditions

(grade 2) were evicted from their homes before people

living in life-threatening conditions (grade 1). In some

cases, the government evicted families and then left

them homeless, jobless, and vulnerable to human rights

violations (Amnesty International, 2011). Meanwhile,

most of the unplanned areas that were left to the care of

governorates continued to receive inadequate resources.

Although such areas are mentioned in the national,

regional, and local plans prepared by the General

Organization for Physical Planning (GOPP), it is clear that

the government has no comprehensive or long-term

strategy for dealing with them. Still, the government

has created special units at the level of the governorate

for upgrading the ‘ashwa’iyaat. This is a commendable

step in theory, but so far, these units have been inactive

and there have been no significant improvements for

informal areas left to the discretion of the governorates.

The government utilizes two types of approaches toward

informal areas: preventative approaches that are meant

to limit informal growth and interventionist approaches

in which the government either improves or removes

informal areas. Preventative approaches include “belting”

or delineating and enforcing urban growth boundaries



(UGB), bans on using agricultural land for residential

purposes or squatting on state-owned desert land, and

using building codes and planning regulations which,

when enforced, prevent the types of structures that

are built in lower-income informal areas. Preventative

policies have not been successful in limiting the growth

of informal areas. At best, they have redirected informal

growth from one area to another or, at worst, they have

encouraged informal growth, left residents unprotected,

and increased corruption at the local level. For example,

the national building standards produced by the Housing

and Building National Research Center (HBRC) are

suitable for mid to high-end housing units, but do not

accommodate the types of buildings that lower income

families can afford. In order to satisfy this demand,

these standards force developers to work informally

(and technically illegally). Developers know that if they

build units that meet the national building codes, their

targeted clientele will not be able to afford them (Nada,

2011).

The government has been equally unsuccessful in

curbing the growth of informal residential buildings

outside city limits. The best known, and oddest,

example of this is the ring road (or new highway) around

the GCR. When the government first envisioned the

ring road, one of its aims was to create a physical barrier

to prevent construction outside of the city perimeter

or on agricultural land (Dorman, 2007). But, thanks to

poor planning, the ring road had the exact opposite

effect: it stimulated the construction of new informal

areas around the road. The rate of urban growth

tripled on Cairo’s outskirts in the 20 years following the

construction of the new highway (Piffero, 2010).

Interventionist approaches involve either relocating

residents to new areas, rehousing inhabitants in their

same areas or upgrading existing areas. In the past,

the government showed a preference for large scale

relocation, especially from unsafe areas. This policy,

however, often created additional hardships for those

residents who were moved far from their original homes

(Patel, 2013). Nevertheless, the government still prefers

the relocation approach, especially when dealing with

areas that it considers unsafe. One reason for this

preference is that it allows the government to redevelop

the informal or unsafe areas (unless the areas in question

are not attractive for investors). Consequently, informal

areas located on prime real estate are more prone to

resettlement policies than other areas. For example,

the Maspero Triangle and Bulaq neighborhoods are

close to the city center as well as the Nile and, as a

result, they have always been coveted by developers.

The government also believes that resettlement

has a positive impact on residents because they are

theoretically resettled in higher quality housing units

with strengthened security of tenure in modern

neighborhoods away from environmental hazards.

This policy, however, is a limited, problem-focused

perspective. The government sees the limitations of the

informal area—poor housing conditions, environmental

hazards, over-crowding, etc.—and sees resettlement as

a solution to those problems. However, this perspective

fails to acknowledge the positive aspects of the

communities targeted for resettlement such as their

social ties, their local access to transportation, local

commercial activities, and previous investment in their

neighborhood. This fact that this perspective uses the

household as the sole unit analysis is problematic. A

household with two parents and two children with a

stable, mid-level income living in a 100m² home is treated

exactly the same as a female-headed household with four

children and unstable income living in a 40m² apartment.



A household with a bread-winner who works downtown

is treated the same way as the bread-winner who relies

on the community economy for income.

Consider, for example, the cost of transportation for

people who were relocated to distant areas and who

cannot find jobs or services in the new location. They

pay more for commuting and for many other services,

while losing the informal social support networks and

employment opportunities that they had in the past.

In most cases, the inhabitants oppose the relocation.

Several cases of forced relocation that took place over

the past few decades sent civil society into action,

culminating in the introduction of Article 63 in the

2014 Constitution, which prohibits the forcible eviction

of any citizen.4 International best practices allow

for relocation only when it takes place on a limited

scale and with the approval and participation of the

inhabitants, who should be fully compensated for any

lost property. Also, the inhabitants must be resettled in

locations that are as close as possible to their original

areas and the government must help them achieve

their former living conditions and make sure they can

earn a steady living (Miranda, 2014). Recently, the

ISDF has sought out community participation more

seriously and relocated residents from unsafe areas to

new housing much closer to their original location than

previous resettlement efforts had done. However, cases

of forced eviction and relocation to distant areas have

not ended entirely. Rehousing is an approach to human

settlements in which the government temporarily

houses a community off-site, clears an existing

settlement, and builds new apartments on the same

land for the original residents. There are two forms

of rehousing. The first form of rehousing is financed

4 Article 63 of the constitution states that “arbitrary and forcible evacuation of citizens is prohibited in any shape and form, and violation of such is to be considered a crime that is not subject to the statute of limitations.

5 We do not use the term in-situ development exclusively as its definition is unclear to most practitioners. Literally, it means development in place. However, it is often confused with rehousing, where residents are temporarily displaced, their homes demolished, and they are rehoused on site.

entirely by public governmental funds. Residents are

temporarily relocated off-site, new public housing

structures are built on the full extent of the original

site, and the residents are either given the units or the

government provides subsidized loans or rents. The

second form of rehousing involves both the government

and a private developer. In Egypt and other countries

with large informal settlements, governments see

this type of rehousing as a low-cost approach to urban

development and a way to attract new investment

to low-income urban areas and “unlock” the true land

value. The result is typically that former residents of

informal areas are rehoused into high-rise housing

complexes while the remaining land is developed for

profit. This solution is not without problems. The

vertical intensification of building is likely to disrupt the

local economy and may paralyze its social ties, as the

latter usually takes place at street level (Giridharadas,

2006). In addition, this option involves a transfer of

property rights from poor communities to real estate

investors in a manner that further disadvantages poor

communities. Decisions made in such matters must be

primarily guided by the needs of the community, not

those of real estate developers.

Upgrading or in-situ development is the gradual

improvement of existing buildings and infrastructure

within an informal settlement to an acceptable

standard over time without demolishing the urban

fabric or displacing residents to another site or

elsewhere on the site (Del Mistro and Hensher,

2009).5 The objective of upgrading is to rejuvenate an

existing community with minimum physical and social

disruption. Upgrading covers a wide range of possible

interventions. Minor upgrades include improving



street-lighting, leveling street surfaces, or painting

homes. Major improvements include the installation

of natural gas infrastructure, the extension of the

sanitation network to each home, the provision of

health facilities, schools or other significant public

services, or renovating buildings (Patel, 2013). There are

three main stages of upgrading an informal settlement

(Choguill et al., 1993):

> Primary level services which address a community’s

basic health needs

> Intermediate level services which are socially and

culturally accepted levels of service

> Ultimate level services which are those services that

are provided for the convenience of residents.

Upgrading is widely considered an international best

practice for improving informal areas. Upgrading

minimizes the direct impact on the local economy

and, for the most part, leaves communities intact.6 It

is less costly than either rehousing or relocation and

can make an immediate, highly visible improvement in

communities. Upgrading is also the best way to ensure

that the targeted community actually benefits from the

project and it can mobilize local investment or attract

outside investment. In Egypt, the government has been

engaged in upgrading for a long time. It provided some

informal areas with utilities and occasionally with some

health, educational, and sports services, often provided

by the support and involvement of donor agencies

in both planning and implementation. However, the

scope of upgrading and manner of intervention require

heightened scrutiny. In cases where intervention is not

based on a real examination of the urgent needs of the

population, precious funding may be wasted without

benefiting the targeted areas.

6 This is not to suggest that there is not any impact on the local economy. Upgrading schemes can have major implications for the real-estate market. Any major investment by the government, improvement of security of tenure, or change in the quality of a community will attract new investment, new residents, and perhaps reshape the nature of a community in the long-term.

Informal areas must not be left to ad hoc interventions

that waste money and effort--to engage in action just

to give the impression that the problems of informal

areas are being properly tackled. Interventions are

often wasteful and deprive other areas of the city

of much-needed resources. If spatial justice is to be

achieved, available resources must reach the entire

population and public funds must be distributed

fairly among various areas and in accordance with

their needs. Government officials must also come

to recognize that informal areas are not a passing

phenomenon but an integral part of the urban fabric,

a part that cannot be overlooked or suppressed.

Previously discussed government policies and

interventions have not curtailed informal areas, but

rather encouraged their growth. Unless we admit that

the problems of informal areas can only be tackled

through a comprehensive and sustainable system of

urban governance, the problem will persist. We need to

distribute public funds and development projects fairly

and put in place a proper system for managing land.

Only then will we have future options for affordable

housing, and only then will informal areas become

livable, safe, and recognized for the value that they and

their residents contribute to Cairo's urban fabric.





Chapter 6:Three Case Studies of Spatial [in]Justice in the Greater Cairo Region

The following case studies illustrate how a lack of data on individual neighborhoods, confusion over

administrative boundaries and the government’s unwillingness to integrate the concept of “adequate housing”

into its development plans create and exacerbate problems of spatial inequality, in both planned and unplanned

areas within the GCR.

> Case 1, Izbit al-Hagganah: Conflicting Data and Concentrated Poverty

> Case 2, Izbit Khayrallah: Administrative Divisions and Spatial Deprivation

> Case 3, Masakin Uthman: Urban Classifications vs. Adequate Housing

58 Chapter 6: Three Case Studies of Spatial [in]Justice in the Greater Cairo Region


Case 1, Izbit al-Hagganah: Conflicting Data and Concentrated Poverty

Izbit al-Hagganah arose as a residential area in the

1960s. It was built on empty land within what is now

the Nasr City East district. The area is sometimes

referred to as “Kilo 4.5” because its main entrance is

below the bridge on the 4.5 km marker on the Cairo-

Suez road. The land was originally owned by the army

and in the 1930s was used to house the Camel Corps,

known as Hagganah (Bremer and Bhuiyan, 2014).

Eventually, members of the corps were allowed, for a

small fee, to build additional houses for their families

although the area was still classified as a military

zone. After the 1952 revolution, a real estate boom in

east Cairo made the location particularly attractive

to working class families who held jobs in affluent

areas nearby, thanks to its relative affordability. The

settlement process began initially through squatting

and later progressed into a complex system of illegal

subdivision and sales, resulting in conflicts and physical

altercations and the emergence of what some called a

“land mafia.”

Although Izbit al-Hagganah is an informal area,

it is listed as one of the sub-districts of East Nasr

City district on the Cairo Governorate website. The

neighborhood of Nasr City East has 21 shiyakhas with

an overall population of 566,397 inhabitants. Of these,

about 67,165 live in Izbit al-Hagganah (CAPMAS,

2013). But satellite images and critical knowledge of

the 3-square kilometer area suggest that the actual

population may be much bigger. Various experts who

have studied the area share this view. Urban researcher

and former president of Alexandria University’s

Engineering College, Dr. Ahmad Munir Soliman, puts

the figure at 400,000 (Soliman, 2004). According to

a survey conducted by the Al-Shehab Institution for

Comprehensive Development, the local population is

one million (Al-Shehab, 2009). Other experts also place

the population at one million inhabitants (Ghazaleh,

2002; El-Gohary, 2004; Masoud and Moawwad, 2007

cited in Sabry, 2009).

The lack of accurate information about the population

of Izbit al-Hagganah makes it difficult to assess the

adequacy of development resources allocated there.

Izbit al-Hagganah is located in the middle of a relatively

prosperous area. The poverty rate of Nasr City East as

a whole is only 2.5%, but in Izbit al-Hagganah, it is 10%

(CAPMAS, 2013). According to available figures, there

are 14,000 people living under the poverty line in Nasr

City East. Almost half of those, or 6,817, live in Izbit

al-Hagganah, and the other half are divided among 20

other shiyakhas. The difference in poverty rates between

Izbit al-Hagganah (10%) and the nearby shiyakhas is

astounding: 0.2% in al-Nadi al-Ahli; 1.9% in al-Mantiqa

al-Sadsa East; 2.2% in in the al-Mantiqa al-Ashira; and

1.9% in al-Hayy al-Ashir (CAPMAS, 2013).

Since budgets are only prepared at the district level,

information on Izbit al-Hagganah’s share of the district

budget is unavailable. So not only is Izbit al-Hagganah,

with its high level of poverty, evidently underserved,

but its inhabitants have no way of knowing what

their share of the district’s budget is, compared to the

neighborhoods around them.

Izbit al-Hagganah must compete for funding with

20 other shiyakhas within the district. Though the

amount of public investment the area receives in total

is unknown, the distribution of schools across Nasr

City East indicates that Izbit al-Hagganah is severely

underserved in terms of access to education. Of the

62 schools in Nasr City East, only two are in Izbit al-

Hagganah despite the fact that the neighborhood,

given its high poverty rate, is in dire need of public, low-

Case 1, Izbit al-Hagganah: Conflicting Data and Concentrated Poverty 59


cost education. The imbalance in the distribution of

schools leads to excessive crowdedness in the schools

located in Izbit al-Hagganah, which undermines the

area’s quality of education.

Tadamun’s research in Izbit al-Hagganah revealed

that many of the area’s residents complained that

the area receives insufficient funds for education and

that these funds go instead to other, more affluent

shiyakhas. Official promises for more schools have gone

unfulfilled. According to residents, the government

often transfers teachers from other Nasr City East

schools to Izbit al-Hagganah as punishment for poor

performance. Izbit al-Hagganah inhabitants sense that

their area is underserved in comparison to the rest

of Nasr City East, and there is significant evidence to

support this view. The area has no fire station and only

one public health clinic.

Izbit al-Hagganah is the poorest shiyakha in Nasr

City East. It houses nearly half the poor of the entire

district, yet it seems to receive disproportionately

fewer resources than other shiyakhas in the district.

Allocating public resources at the shiyakha level rather

than just at the district level could help to ensure that

local development resources end up where they are

most needed and that residents of areas like Izbit al-

Hagganah do not sink deeper into poverty simply by

virtue of where they live.

Case 2, Izbit Khayrallah: Administrative Divisions and Spatial Deprivation

Forty years ago, the area now known as Izbit Khayrallah

was an uninhabited rocky plateau situated north of

Maadi in southeast Cairo. In the mid-1970s, immigrants

from Upper Egypt and the Delta began settling on this

vacant land. Using mostly stones quarried from the

area, residents too poor to buy or rent a home in other

parts of the city began to build their own homes in

Izbit Khayrallah. After a 1992 earthquake, population

density increased in Izbit Khayrallah and other informal

areas as people who lost their homes began looking for

an alternative residence that close to the city center.

The government was unable to provide affordable

housing options, and displaced families ended up

in Izbit Khayrallah and other informal areas, where

housing was cheaper.

There is no reliable data concerning the size of the

population in Izbit Khayrallah, the allocation of public

resources, or even the public officials in charge of

providing services to the area. Despite being a clearly

defined area known to its inhabitants and recognizable

in aerial photography, the government does not

classify Izbit Khayrallah as a single entity, but rather

divides it among several districts, and sometimes

among several shiyakhas within the same district. Izbit

Khayrallah appears on administrative maps as spanning

several districts, which makes it extremely difficult to

determine the governing body responsible for the area’s

amenities and public services, such as paving, lighting,

and infrastructure.

Izbit Khayrallah is split among the districts of Masr al-

Qadima, Dar al-Salam, and al-Basatin. The eastern side

of Nagah Street (the main street) is said to belong to the

Khalifah district, at least according to CAPMAS data.



But the Cairo Governorate website, which is believed

to be more recently updated, tells another story.

According to the website, Izbit Khayrallah is divided

among three shiyakhas: Athar al-Nabil (in Masr al-

Qadima district),Kom Ghorab (also in Masr al-Qadima

district), and Basatin al-Gharbiya (in al-Basatin district).

It has been difficult to establish beyond a doubt the

administrative affiliation of the eastern side of al-Nagah

Street. The Cairo Governorate division, however, uses

the ISDF map (2013), which places the southern areas of

Izbit Khayrallah in the district of Masr al-Qadima rather

than in the district of Dar al-Salam.

Aside from confusion over which district Izbit

Khayrallah belongs to, there is no official assessment

of the area’s population. It is also difficult to gauge the

poverty level in the area, although figures in the three

above-mentioned shiyakhas are as follows: 44% in Athar

al-Nabi, 46% in Kom Ghorab, and 25% in al-Basatin

al-Gharbiya. As most of Izbit Khayrallah belongs to

Athar al-Nabi and al-Basatin, one can assume that the

poverty rate in the area is between 44% and 46%.

The lack of data, which researchers and decision makers

rely on to provide recommendations and draw plans, is

problematic. The administrative fragmentation of the

area creates difficulties for inhabitants when dealing

with the government. Even going to police stations and

government legal offices to procure official documents,

receive IDs, or apply for permits can be frustrating for a

resident unsure of which district he or she lives in.

The current administrative fragmentation contributes

to the deterioration of services and amenities and

amplifies local grievances. It hampers residents’ ability

to demand services and amenities. Izbit Khayrallah has

only one elementary school and one Azharite Institute

(a public, religious school). Despite the large size of its

population, there are no other government agencies

in Izbit Khayrallah. Local development programs are

divided among various neighborhoods. As a result, the

budgets of the relevant districts—modest as they are—

are largely spent outside Izbit Khayrallah.

Izbit Khayrallah has no independent budget to tackle

the large development deficiencies in the area. The

responsible government body for developing the area

is unclear, thus there are no public officials or offices

which residents may hold accountable for grievances.

The local inhabitants, despite their significant

population, have been unable to win any seats in the

local councils or the parliament, mainly because they

are a minority in all of their voting districts. Because

of the political, social, and economic marginalization

of the area, some Izbit Khayrallah inhabitants are

demanding a separate district in order to improve

access to public services.

Izbit Khayrallah is not the only place in which such

problems exist. The way resources are allocated in

Egyptian cities does not consider the cohesiveness

of urban communities; overlooks the fact that each

area has different needs; does not pay attention to

the existing networks of social relations, economic

transactions, and transportation; and fails to

address other pertinent matters. In short, the

allocation of resources tends to reflect arbitrary

administrative divisions rather than the actual needs

of areas’ residents.

The phenomena of poverty, deprivation, and urban

deterioration are extensive in the GCR. Poverty pockets

and deprivation belts crisscross the borders of districts

and governorates. For example, the areas located to the

east of the Nile in South Cairo, which administratively

belongs to the Giza Governorate, share much of the

deprivation traits observed across the river in the

Cairo Governorate. The needs of al-Tibbin district have

Case 2, Izbit Khayrallah: Administrative Divisions and Spatial Deprivation 61


much in common with the nearby city of al-Saff, but

because the former is part of Cairo Governorate and

the latter is part of Giza Governorate, the two areas

have independent plans and budgets. The final say in

such matters is left to the centralized authority of the

governorate in question.

When administrative borders are drawn in a manner

that overlooks development needs and ignores urban

realities, local administration is muddled and the

allocation of resources is distorted. Thus, the needs of

certain areas become harder to monitor and address.

Unless we tackle this issue, start dealing with areas

suffering from spatial deprivation in a comprehensive

manner, and redraw the current administrative

boundaries, it will be hard to save urban areas from

further deterioration.

Figure (16) A primary school working two shifts, morning and evening, is the only public school in the area. The residents of Izbit Khayrallah rely on the services of nearby areas or those provided by civil society groups, such as charity and religious institutions involved in health care.

Source: Original map by Tadamun (2015), data sourced from GOPP (General Office of Physical Planning).



Case 3, Masakin Uthman: Urban Classifications vs. Adequate Housing

1 In 2008, an earthquake triggered a rockslide, which killed over 200 residents of Duwayqah, an informal settlement in the east of Cairo. This event sparked the creation of the Informal Settlement Development Facility (ISDF) to examine and classify the condition of housing stock in informal places.

The Awla-bil-Riyaah [worthy of care] housing project,

better known as “Masakin Uthman,” is a residential

area built on eight square kilometers on the road to the

Bahariya Oases. The area consists of identical six-story

apartment buildings and is only 10-15 km away from

the luxury gated communities and shopping malls of

6th of October City. To a casual visitor, the development

would seem as if it sprang inexplicably out of the

desert. It is surrounded by arid land in all directions. The

nearest sign of life, so to speak, is the 6th of October

City cemeteries. Today, Masakin Uthman is home to

16,000 people (ISDF, 2011).

This development was part of National Housing

Project (NHP), a state-run and funded project. The

NHP aimed to build 500,000 housing units within six

years through seven different programs. One of these

programs was Awla-bil-Riyaah, which was dedicated

to the construction of housing units of 42m² designed

to be rented out to tenants on 5-year leases. The

project involved the construction of 13,000 units in

6th of October City by three different companies. The

state gave more than 1,000 of these units to the Cairo

Governorate to house families displaced from various

areas considered “unsafe” by the ISDF.

Acting to prevent a recurrence of the 2008 Duwayqah

tragedy, Cairo Governorate began evicting residents

from al-Duwayqah and Istabl Antar and re-housing

them in the new units built near 6th of October City,

although this meant sending them nearly 40 km away

from their original dwellings.1 Some of those who

relocated to these outlying settlements considered the

area to be too isolated and totally lacking in services,

transportation, and jobs. In recent years, powerful

individuals exploiting the legal void that followed the

2011 revolution commandeered some apartments and

even entire blocks in the area. Rent rates, although now

higher than the original rates set by the government,

are still affordable in comparison with other parts of

Cairo, so the area attracts those who cannot find other

affordable housing options. African and Arab refugees

living in constrained economic circumstances have also

sought affordable housing in the area. Refugees from

Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, and Yemen are known to

have moved in, but no figures are yet available about

the size of those communities.

Masakin Uthman brings into question the very

definition of unplanned or informal areas. The entire

development was planned and built by the government,

so it cannot be described as unplanned or informal.

But most of those living there today have illegal leases.

Furthermore, because there are no shops or even

religious spaces in the area, the inhabitants created

stands and kiosks to sell basic goods, such as groceries.

Using the alleyways and ground-level apartments, they

also created coffeehouses and mosques. Lacking access

to public transportation, they use microbuses and tuk-

tuks.

Although neither unplanned or informal, the area

suffers from most of the characteristics of the informal

areas. Big families are cramped into small apartments;

the supply of potable water is poor; jobs and basic

education and health services are lacking; and common

facilities such as sport and youth clubs, police stations,

shops, and public transportation are either lacking or

Case 3, Masakin Uthman: Urban Classifications vs. Adequate Housing 63


in short supply. Due to the extralegal ways in which

property changes hands, the residents have no legal

protection and may find it hard to fight eviction.

The main reason Masakin Uthman replicates the

experience of ‘ashwa’iyaat is that government agencies

are unwilling to recognize the concept of adequate

housing or implement it in a proper fashion. These

agencies see housing as a physical product, as the

mere provision of a roof over one’s head. But adequate

housing goes beyond this narrow definition to invoke

other dynamic aspects of urban life. And Masakin

Uthman is not alone in this situation. Many official

residential areas in Cairo, including those in al-Nahda,

Madinat al-Salam, and Madinat Badr, have similar

problems.

The way to prevent this from happening is to ask the

following questions. Why do people inhabit informal

areas to start with? Why don’t they try to leave them

despite the hardship of life in these areas? Why do many

return to their original neighborhoods after being sent

to new housing projects? In other words, what are

the advantages of informal areas? And why do official

government projects fail to provide such advantages?

The residents of informal areas know the answers.

They cite affordable housing, good locations, proximity

to work and services, and a tight-knit social support

system. These characteristis are key pillars of the

concept of adequate housing. As a woman living in

Masakin Uthman put it, “one room in al-Duwayqah

is a hundred times better than an apartment here”

(Tadamun, 2015).

Masakin Uthman, an official social housing project

implemented by the government, ended up creating

the same problems it purported to solve. Indeed,

living conditions in new government housing projects

are sometimes far worse than those in areas the

government was concerned with in the first place.

Following strict definitions, Masakin Uthman and

similarly-built areas cannot be labeled informal or

unplanned, but from an adequate housing perspective,

Masakin Uthman is one of the most deprived urban

locations in the GCR.



Figure (17) Transferring residents from centrally-located informal areas, such as al-Duwayqah and Istabl Antar, to peripheral areas without providing necessary services and amenities leads to further inequality.

Source: Tadamun (2015)



Conclusion:The Road to Just and Sustainable Development

66 Conclusion: The Road to Just and Sustainable Development


Citizen demands sometimes elicit resentful responses

from local Egyptian government officials who are

prone to citing inadequate funding as justification for

inaction, when in reality, funding is less of an issue

than the fair and effective use of available public

resources. The fewer resources a nation has, the more

careful and responsible its government should be when

setting development priorities. This issue is omitted

discussions about the availability of funding.

Equally important is the fact that decision makers

cannot plan for just and sustainable development

if they lack accurate, extensive, and multi-faceted

measurements of urban poverty and inequality. Nor

can they make good policies without acknowledging

that city inhabitants do not share the same access to

services and public projects. Officials must identify

the disparities between various parts of the city and

make it their aim to close existing gaps. Research is also

needed on how poverty pockets emerge and how they

may turn into poverty traps over time. In short, unless

we address the root of this problem, we cannot possibly

break the vicious circle of unjust and unsustainable

urban development in Egypt.

Furthermore, when planning any urban intervention,

we must look at the city as a dynamic entity with its

own set of economic and social interactions; for even

the poor benefit from the jobs that nearby affluent areas

may provide. This comprehensive view of the city may

help urban planners make the right decisions. But if they

continue treating various areas as separate, independent

entities, current problems are likely to endure.

The right to adequate housing is a national goal that

is now enshrined in Egypt’s constitution. It is also

a right that must guide local development efforts.

Assessing the needs of various cities and governorates

and understanding the priorities of the population is

necessary to tackle the current inequalities. We must

appreciate the need for adequate housing across the

country, and recognize that adequate housing is not

only about providing living quarters, but also access to

public services, roads, transportation, and jobs.

Unless current development efforts target the groups

most in need, and unless resources are distributed

carefully according to well-managed programs, just and

sustainable development will remain out of reach. To

succeed, we must change our approach to development

needs and introduce the kind of institutional reforms

that may invigorate the system of local administration

in Egypt. We need to empower local authorities

in governorates and districts, provide them with

financial and administrative backing, enhance their

performance, and rid them of corruption. Such

tasks presume the presence of a strong civil society

that can participate in decision-making and enforce

accountability in an effective manner.

To achieve a just and fair distribution of public

resources, the government needs to introduce

numerous changes to the way in which it prepares the

state budget, changes that ensure that the allocation

of resources mirrors actual needs and is done through

transparent and participatory mechanisms. Instead of

local authorities and state employees communicating

solely with the Ministry of Finance, local communities

must be involved. Local communities must be given

access to executive authorities and parliamentary

representatives. Furthermore, mechanisms must be

introduced for oversight and accountability regarding

public spending throughout the implementation of

various projects, so as to ensure that these projects

meet their goals and succeed in improving the quality of

living for everyone, especially those most in need.



The main goal for the Planning [in] Justice project is to

illustrate the capacity of spatial justice maps to provide

a better and broader picture of development gaps, local

investment patterns, the government’s urban policies,

and the needs of unique urban communities. Maps, as

the project shows, allow us to compare various areas

with relative ease and apply multiple indicators to

produce better assessments of the situation. The maps

we produced in the Planning [in] Justice project allow

us to see poverty in the GCR in a new dimension. These

maps make it possible to visualize disparities between

public spending and local needs, by showing, for

example, the availability of schools, hospitals, water,

sewage, and other public services across different

neighborhoods of varying income levels. In short, the

maps bring clarity to complex situations, thus making it

easier for the public and decision makers to understand

pressing urban development imperatives.

The Planning [in] Justice project goes beyond the level

of governorates and districts to illuminate conditions at

the shiyakha level, thus allowing us to identify inequality

on a very local scale that is often ignored. Through this

analysis, it became clear that some districts tend to

favor the richer shiyakhas, while ignoring the poorer

ones. Far from trying to address such issues, the

current local administration system tends to reinforce

spatial inequality.

Informal areas are situated in the heart of Egyptian

cities and are subject to the mandate of local

authorities. But if the local authorities ignore these

areas, preferring instead to spend their resources

on adjacent but richer areas, areas whose residents

have influence, the conditions in informal areas are

bound to worsen daily and the residents of such areas

are unlikely to have access to the same level of public

services available to affluent areas. In fact, informal

areas are not the only places that suffer this fate. Many

formal areas, especially those inhabited by low and

middle-income people, experience the deterioration of

public services. Facts such as these make one realize

the problems of informal areas cannot be resolved

through ad hoc programs and grants aiming to upgrade

the ashwa’iyaat. At the end of the day, such programs

and grants will never cover all the underserved areas,

for they fall short of addressing the institutional causes

that create and perpetuate such problems. If we

truly wish to break this vicious cycle, we must reform

the local government systems and begin allocating

resources and programs in a fair manner. We must start

by targeting the communities most in need.

Decision makers appreciate the value of mapping

for analyzing and guiding policy. This is one reason

for researchers to continue to analyze the spatial

dimension of government policies and social changes.

Tadamun has established communication with

numerous policy makers who appreciate this approach

and recognize its benefits. We have written a number of

policy briefs which focus on aspects of these problems.

But maps are merely a tool—they cannot bring about

reform unless supported by political resolve. Laws

that guarantee access to information and data are

a necessary to create a real partnership between

government and the community of researchers, local

groups, and civil society that furthers the right of urban

citizens to just and sustainable development.

68 Conclusion: The Road to Just and Sustainable Development




Citations:Relevant Egyptian Laws and Works Cited


70 Citations

Relevant Egyptian Laws

> Egypt’s Constitution, 2014

> Law 53 for 1973 on the General State Budget

> Law 70 for 1973 on the preparation and follow up of the General State Budget

> Law 127 for 1981 on government accountability

> Presidential Decree 43 for 1970 on the Local Government Law, amended by law 50 for 1981, by law 26 for 1082, by

law 145 for 1988, by law 9 for 1989, and by law 84 for 1996.**

> The unified building law for 2008

> Executive memorandum 144 for 2009 on the implementation of the unified building law

* The above laws are available at the government website: http://www.egypt.gov.eg/arabic/laws

** Laws concerning local government are available on the website of the Ministry of Local Development:

http://www.mld.gov.eg/Arabic/TOP/AboutMinistry/Orgrelatedtoministry/LD/1971

Relevant Egyptian Laws 71


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74 Citations: Relevant Egyptian Laws and Works Cited



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